


Better To Know

by wishwellingtons



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Brighton - Freeform, F/M, M/M, Multi, Post-politics Malcolm, Spying, Terrible things happen, the Macdonald children
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 15:24:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 65,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishwellingtons/pseuds/wishwellingtons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All through his life, Malcolm had held on to two basic principles: that there would always be time for Jamie to come to his senses, and that if the wee psycho didn't, Malcolm would fucking well cope. </p><p>(Malcolm's won the appeal and is in the right, but not (yet) back in politics. Julius Nicholson is trying to monetise his ancestral pile in these difficult financial times. Dan Miller has delusions of grandeur, Peter Mannion thinks he's in love, and Olly's not very good at his job. </p><p>And Jamie? Well, there's been an accident...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The truth will make you bitter

**Author's Note:**

> The title "Better To Know" comes from the song by The Indelicates.  
> I can't promise you a happy ending, but I do hope you enjoy the fall.
> 
>  
> 
> The truth will make you bitter  
> Even while it sets you free  
> She's a haunting daunting mistress  
> She ain't been good to me

Unusually, Claire Macdonald rose first. Even though her climb and scramble to silence the alarm dislodged a dozen small objects – pens, hairslides, the plug from an Apple charger, and two small warrior figures with pink fluff glued to their rigid plastic heads – Jamie didn’t move. Not even his shoulderblades, visible beneath the worn cotton of his _Motherwell Rules_ t-shirt (which he was wearing back-to-front) twitched. She shrugged; he’d done last night’s monsters-beneath-beds run, then had a nightmare and gone for a smoke at three. Perhaps he was managing to sleep through.

She scuffed through to the bathroom, and the shower turned on a minute later.

Certainly, when Nellie Mairead Teresa Macdonald, diminutive terror disguised as a porcelain doll, barrelled into the bedroom and landed feet first on her father’s chest, Jamie made the noises appropriate to a man recently unconscious. When he’d stopped oofing, swearing and rubbing his bruised ribcage, he saw that his youngest daughter – Shirley Temple’s handier sister – was clutching a single ballet shoe. He tried to remember what day it was, but if the shower was on it couldn’t be Saturday.

“Nellie… s’no ballet today, pet.”

“Dinnae care. I wan’ bally. Doan’ like nursery. S’ _stupit_.”

This was her new reaction to everything, and Jamie sighed. One of her feet, incredibly small and in an Eeyore sock, prodded him in the shoulder.

“You do like ballet. You love that Mrs – Mrs – “

“Fotherby-Smythe,” called Ruth, trailing into the room in bee-striped pyjamas. She had one finger stuffed between the pages of _Matilda_ , a book she was re-reading in hope of teaching her possessions to move (Maggie, her eldest sister, claimed to have mastered it, and Maggie was such that Ruth couldn’t quite disbelieve her). Jamie lifted his head as best he could, wondering why he let his wee yin attend a nursery where the auld biddies had two names (“C’mon, pet, let’s go and get washed, s’only for the morning so da can work”), and also (as Nellie, a small blonde football, settled more firmly over his respiratory system) whether he would ever breathe again.

Ruth drifted over to the bedroom window, and began pressing her face to the glass. Nothing interesting was happening outside – nobody puttin’ interestin’ stuff in their _bins_ , or havin’ rows, or gettin’ a _dog_ – so she started pressing harder, alternately turning her nose up like a pig, and squishing it down so it made a hooked beak. Mr Elliot in the house opposite was putting some bottles in the recycling. Glancing up, he caught sight of a cherub with the face of a piglet, and jumped. “How d’you know when someone’s done a crime?” Ruth wondered, aloud.

“What?” Jamie jerked his hard too sharply, tried to sit up, and was nearly winded. “Why? Ruth?”

Ruth breathed steam onto the glass and drew an eyehole on it. “Matilda uses magic to find out Miss Trunchbull, but I ‘spect that’s not really allowed, is it da?”

“I cannae find my flute bag.”

The door swung open and the eldest Macdonald was in the room: Maggie Sorcha Catherine Mary Macdonald, named for three acknowledged saints and one living one (NOT that milk-stealing bitch, fuck you Eamon/Frankie/Caillen, but Jamie’s mother, four feet ten inches of an angel, less than fifteen years older than her eldest son).

Twelve years old and by some miracle already dressed in her high school uniform, Maggie waved a handful of paperwork and glared at the other three. Jamie burst with pride whenever he looked at her. She was – and this was what made him proudest - her mother’s daughter: practical, clever, and possessed of incredible tenacity. He never considered that the perception and stubbornness that scowled out of her vast blue eyes were entirely his own. Maggie had the same angelic crop of curls as her sisters (albeit darker; Ruth was ash-blonde and Nellie frankly yellow) and would never reach five foot one, but even early in the morning she carried enough natural authority for Nellie to voluntarily dislodge herself and join in paying attention.

“Well, where was your music, then, pet?” Sheet music and Grade 3 books spilled from Maggie’s hand.

“No’ in my bag. Nellie, did you steal my bag?”

“Dinnae WANT your smelly flute bag. Dinnae LIKE your stupit manky flute, s’just you _bawlin’ on_ an’ _on_ \- “

“Use a carrier bag, hen, just this once? Ruth, pet, let’s do your hair.” Jamie was heaving himself out of bed, wondering when he’d started audibly creaking and why he felt as if the Northern Line had been back and forth on his spine all night. “C’mon, Nellie, breakfast.”

“No, da, I need my bag. The other girls – “ Jamie looked sharply at her. Maggie _wasnae_ at a private school, it only had fuckin’ _charitable_ _status_ and he’d argued the point with Claire to _death_ but maybe he shouldnae have given in, not if those posh bitches – fuckin’ run them over – “ – well, they’ve proper bags. And Uncle Malc sent it to me.”

There was a microscopic pause, while Jamie wondered if he should just swallow the five hairpins he’d jammed between his lips (Claire’d made him quit, yet another condition for saving their marriage), preparatory to plaiting Ruth’s hair, when fortunately, Ruth interrupted.

“It was me,” she said dreamily. “Sorry, Maggie. I needed something to store the rocks in. For Fossil Week. It’s in my room behind Mrs. Glensops’s head.” She twisted to peer up at her father. “Do you think cats get bored?”

“ – no I fucky doe’” Jamie muttered, around the clips, and Nellie looked up in glee.  
  
“Da said fuck, da said _fuck_!”

“I wish he wouldn’t,” said Claire, appearing in the bedroom in a towel (good) but looking at Jamie with heavy irritation (bad). Maggie, go and get sorted. Nellie, have you washed your face? Give those here, I’ll do it.” Mutely, Jamie handed over the clips and ushered Nellie along to the bathroom (she was still muttering the _bad word_ , with great satisfaction, _sotto voce_ ). The door was at the top of the stairs, and Jamie just had time to – over the childgate – cast a longing look down at the hall table, where his phone and charger were plugged in at the wall. Claire had a rule about no technology in the bedroom, and every other socket was jammed full of electric keyboards, hair straighteners, complicated and vicious robotic toys that claimed to the battery-operated but turned out to be anything but, educational capitalism, Chinese-made pink stuff, purple strings of fairy lights (shaped like hearts, flowers, and chillis), iPod chargers, hairdryers, trainsets, and a fully-lit three-storey dream castle for badgers.

There was no time for Jamie to check his phone now, and besides, he knew he didn’t need to. Nobody rang that phone, except Sam, and it wasn’t Christmas or one of the girls’ birthdays. Oh, _work_ rang but they were all cocks who could fuck themselves with a bottle (as he might suggest later that day, during the intern’s Performance Development Review). But nobody Jamie really cared to speak to. And it was ridiculous – fuckin’, as Nellie would have put it, _stupit_ – to think it’d be any different today.

“Daddy,” Nellie said firmly. “I cannae reach the bog roll,” and Jamie, finding this to be so, returned himself to the task at hand.

“You look poorly,” she told him, a few minutes later, when he was trying to get the toothpaste out of hair.

“Do you have plague?” Ruth asked, dressed in blouse and gymslip (but not, it must be said, in tights or jumper), sitting with her back against the bathroom wall.

“No,” said Jamie, slightly more sharply than he’d intended. Maggie reappeared, halfway down the stairs.

“Mam says we cannae have chocolate spread on our toast. Can we?”

“No. Fuck,” he added, as the comb he’d been using to separate Colgate from curls clattered down into the wet bottom of the basin. “It’ll rot your teeth. Right, Ruth, tights on – Nellie, _move_.”

“You do look awful, da,” Maggie added, as – somehow – Jamie marshalled the convoy downstairs. Claire was in the hallway, knotting her scarf and rifling through her briefcase. There was the smell of toast and coffee from the kitchen, and Jamie telegraphed his wife a moue of exhausted relief.

“Why doesn’t Ruth have any tights on?” Frowning, Claire touched his cheek with the back of her hand. “You’re burning up. You sure you’re okay to – “

“Aye, aye, fine. Say goodbye to your mam, girls.”

“I wanna chockit sped,” Nellie shouted, stretching up for her kiss.

“You can’t, it rots your teeth.” Maggie shepherded her through to the kitchen, expression suddenly serious.

“Good luck wi’ the OFSTED twats. No surrender, eh?” Jamie smiled, and ignored the inadvertent kick in his guts.

“Does God have teeth?” Ruth wondered, watching her mother pull off down the drive.

 

 

 

The night Tom became _de facto_ leader of the Labour Party, Claire Macdonald had stayed at home with Maggie, sponging chicken-pox-sick off her dress and staring down the barrel of a positive pregnancy test. Jamie came home at two the following afternoon, stinking of tobacco and well through his quotidian transformation into a werewolf, this time uncorrected by a shower and shave.

He was angrier than Claire had ever seen him, complaining that Malcolm had betrayed him, lost faith in him, and signed the whole fucking country up for residence beneath the foreskin of those Waitrose-smelting Rangers twats in the Nutter cabal. Malcolm no longer saw any fucking distinction between good Labour – the kind that was meant to rescue bairns off estates and give mastery to the workers and generally stop those fascist cunts with tweed-flavoured dicks jizzing Oswald Mosley’s Greatest Hits over our faces for ever more, world-without-end-fuck’s-sake – and these champagne-piss ballsacks. Malcolm was willing to _pretend_ there was no fucking distinction, anyway, and to act like handwaved liberal guilt and being mates with the nouveau fucking regime of pill-dropping nutjobs had anything to do with what was right and true.

Malcolm was prepared to oil up and get fucking with the Nutters, but not with Jamie.

Jamie would swear later he had meant this in the political and not the literal sense.

Claire heard him out, then presented him with black coffee, and the evidence of his fertility. She let him drink the coffee before mentioning she’d used the test as a stirrer.

 

The next fortnight involved Claire shouting until her throat was raw, a visit to the house by Malcolm, and another when Frankie brought Jamie’s desk round in a cardboard box. Jamie never went back to the office, but Claire wasn’t sure that meant he hadn’t seen Malcolm. She’d been felled by morning sickness and was desperately trying to lure estate agents to their house, while simultaneously ensuring said house was sick-and-fags-free. There were times when Jamie went out, sometimes with Maggie (who, looking bad, seemed to have been invariably off school sick). There was one time when he came back and looked as if he’d been crying.

Claire had expected the storming, the desperate rage about how his CV proved he was institutionalised in Westminster, functionally illiterate in any place where he couldn’t swear, and had a post-journalism career consisting entirely of Malcolm’s coat-tails and high-level political terrorism. A fistful of arts clippings, seven speeding tickets and a reputation so toxic he’d once given a cross-bench peer a heart scare were hardly a fucking portfolio.

But Claire had also expected complaints that he couldn’t leave Malcolm or the rest of the boys. He spared her that, and also an altercation about Scotland. She knew, and he seemed to agree, that if London was no longer tenable, then Scotland was no alternative.

Eventually, Claire did what any good Catholic wife would do, and asked their parish priest for help. Nauseous and overheated, with Maggie back at school and Jamie _out_ , she’d gone and confessed her frustration, her assessment of the facts, and her exhausted plan. It had been the priest who asked her about her A Levels, and (after muttering an absolution) whisked back the confessional curtain to give her the name of three Catholic high schools. So, in the end, they’d moved for her new job, and not for his.

Thus, Macdonalds moved South – near enough for Jamie to venture back by train, for interviews or gigs, but close enough to the new breed of think-tanks and consultancies taking advantage of seaside regeneration. He got taken on very quickly by a communications consultancy who were self-consciously ballsy enough to hire him, but then became too frightened to ask him to leave.

Jamie consulted brilliantly in the sense that he menaced and threatened his clients’ enemies, rather than giving those clients any actual advice. His firm, learning to drop raw meat through the cage-bars, made much of him and gave him plenty of skulls to crunch. When prospective cash cows first visited the office, they saw the shattered lives of Malcolm Tucker’s past enemies, all ranged round Jamie like safari on a wall. If anything, it helped that Jamie visibly didn’t give a shit.

 

Claire became PA to the headmaster of Brighton’s best faith school, one which she and Jamie hoped Maggie – and baby Ruth, when she came along – would attend. Nellie was conceived shortly before Malcolm’s sacking. That had unnerved Claire; she only felt truly safe when he went to prison, when she could feel sure he wouldn’t suddenly appear on the seashore, hunched against the wind and stalking along in quest of Jamie; like a black-winged monster (perhaps the one that Jamie dreamt of, during those punch-ups with the duvet) swimming up from the sea.

But Malcolm never came, or called. He sent presents at Christmas for the girls, and on their birthdays; even to the little one, Nellie, whom he’d never met. After he was sentenced, Claire wondered if the presents would stop, and when the first one arrived she felt slightly nauseous imagining Maggie unwrapping a present that had seen the inside of a prison. It hadn’t, of course – Jamie, in a clouded undertone, identified the neat handwriting on the card as Sam’s. The taste was Malcolm’s, though – the latest book in a set on which he’d started her before. Malcolm was Maggie’s godfather, and Ruth’s too. Jamie had been genuinely at a loss for whom to ask for Nellie; eventually Claire suggested their old priest from London, the one who’d so kindly found her a job.

They didn’t talk about Malcolm – Jamie sometimes _nearly_   went as far as offering to get in touch and tell Malcolm to stop. For all that, the presents made him angrier than they made Claire. Malcolm lost the right to care about Jamie’s family the day he stopped caring about Jamie. For all _that_ , any man who didn’t want to send his perfect girls present was a fucking monster, and Malcolm always chose really really well.

Jamie tried not to think about the wallet still not unpacked from the box stuffed in their wardrobe, wrapped up with the cufflinks he’d never worn. They’d also been well-chosen. Jamie wasn’t the kind of man to wax sentimental about the note inside the wallet, or the fact that it was his only sample of Malcolm’s handwriting. That didn’t mean he didn’t _know_.

Claire liked her job, and she liked Brighton. She and Jamie continued to have a reasonable marriage. Jamie blended better than she’d have dared to hope with the school-gate parents. He cordially despised the full-time dads with their macho bonhomie and knowledge of baby yoga, but he also noticed that their kids bit them far less often than Nellie did him. Jamie took his aggression out on his colleagues, and periodically terrified the local government, trying throughout to ignore the ubiquity of pointless cuntiness in their new acquaintance. Claire made friends and tried hard to ignore Jamie’s bitterness. With three stepdads and eight addresses by the time he was in big school, Malcolm Tucker’s heat-seeking missile was a criminally nervous dad. He looked to Claire to help him navigate this two-career parenting lark. After all, the longest relationship of his life had been built on instincts, and look where that turned out.

Claire didn’t know if she felt sorry for him. Sorry enough to do breakfast on the day Malcolm got released, certainly – but perhaps she was just building in a margin of time, expediting breakfast so that Jamie’s preoccupations didn’t cost the girls a late mark.

She loved Jamie. They had normal lives, and a normal sex life – which was (to a normal degree) hampered by the fact they were both permanently fucking exhausted.

 

Pulling into her designated parking space beside the chapel, Claire shrugged off a superstitious pang. Malcolm hadn’t been in direct contact with Jamie since  _before_ the day he went to prison. That wouldn’t change now.

 

 

 

Maggie made her bus in decent time, replete with flute and flute bag. Then, however, Nellie upended the cereal, necessitating a complete change of clothes. To save time, Jamie re-dressed her in whatever had dried on the living room radiator, picked up his laptop, and strapped two small girls into his car (now smack bang on E for Empty). If the smallest girls was now wearing a green-and-pink t-shirt, yellow shorts, polka dot woolly tights and jelly sandals, well, so be it. If the other girl announced just as they got to the school gates that she’d forgotten all her pet rocks for fossil week, Jamie was superdad and he’d go back and get them, wouldn’t he?

He drove back, fast enough that he could spend the entire journey on a phonecall to work, ordering them to reschedule his first meeting because he was late, and threatening them with impromptu appendectomies if they didn’t. Maggie’s reclamation of the flute bag having scattered all twenty-five pet rocks across Ruth’s bedroom carpet, repacking them took a while. As, of course, did re-repacking them when the Aldi bag he’d requisitioned as a substitute disintegrated under the weight of half of Brighton beach. 

Finally, fully-loaded, he raced back downstairs and suddenly found himself having the dry heaves so violent he thought his eyes and lungs would burst, as one. He got to the kitchen sink before establishing he wouldn’t be sick. His legs, however, wouldn’t have it, and – registering sour on his tongue and collapsible jelly where his knees should have been – he was grateful he’d managed to slowly slide down one of the kitchen units.

His eyes were watering; luckily, he didn’t need his eyes to find a cigarette. Claire’s perceptive fury meant it wasn’t worth actually lighting the fucker indoors, but the solidity of it was reassuring. In a few minutes, he could breathe easily again, if exclusively through his nose. He got to his feet, picked up the bag of pet rocks, and went from the house, cheeks hollowed and the (swiftly-lit) cigarette glued between his lips. He still felt queasy and the door keys took him a couple of tries. The roadworks on Edward Street had started again at nine o’clock, so he obediently followed the diversion, and after ten minutes drove into the side of a delivery van.


	2. Despite All The Fools And The Liars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new Tory PM looks set for election victory but Dan Miller's in denial. Olly Reeder hides from the light (and Sam, which is much the same thing) while Jamie (perhaps) walks towards it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite all the fools and liars  
> Despite all of the wars  
> The pursuit of liberty is  
> Still a noble cause
> 
> (a shorter chapter)

Oliver Reeder had spent the past two years in what could only be called an uphill battle.

JB’s resignation had been the only sweet in a great deal of bitter. It was hard, now, for Olly to identify what the first problem had been. Not one of the obvious disasters, though. Not the discrediting of the Party, his leader’s Faustian pact with mirrors and skincare, or the fact that the man who’d defined the air they breathed and the manner in which they timorously inhaled it had gone to prison, leaving behind the kind of stink that not only clung but threatened to do asbestos-style things to your innards.

Perhaps, actually, the first problem had been Sam. She was unlike the rest of the Mafia – she hadn’t, for example, done a shit on Olly’s car, bought her union rep a camp bed so she could sleep in front of Olly’s door, or insisted to an (insolent, gingerish) man that Scots Gaelic was the official language of the Press and Comms department, to be spoken without exception on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Old Firm days, and the birthdays of Al Jolson, Billy McNeill and Kylie. But Sam was still a qualified nightmare. Fifteen minutes into their acquaintance, she’d pleasantly drawn attention to the fact that she was not only legally unsackable but knew where the bodies were buried and could rearrange the forensics to give him full responsibility.

She was ostensibly a perfect PA: unflappable, inscrutable and never _conclusively_ proven to have spat in his latte (she actually hadn’t, despite Eamonn encouraging to do so and then stir it with a tampon). She just had a way of looking at Olly, usually across a document for which he’d asked her and which she’d retrieved instantly, that made him feel like he was some snivelling knobsqueak on his first day at St Buggery’s Prep School for the Compulsively Failing. It made Olly – but only a very little bit – want to cry. It also made him worry that he was _still_ hearing Malcolm in his head.

Sam had asked for the day off on the day Malcolm left prison. Olly hadn’t known the date until several weeks after agreeing to the leave – she hadn’t given a reason and Olly was essentially too terrified to ask in case it was a smear test or something – when he learned of Malcolm’s release via an insulting and scatological e-card from, of all the gutless tinhatted spods, Phil Smith. Olly had responded with a Photoshop of Mannion trying to give Bloody Mary cunnilingus.

It seemed unfair that the Tory leader should be relatively sane (aside, of course, from politics), when the Labour leader was such an overbred shining evil twat. Dan was photogenic, but he was also Satan’s less selfless brother-in-law. Moreover, despite the election’s imminence and the PM’s uncanny, horrifying ability to harness an air of common sense and remind a wavering centre-right electorate of their most terrifying nanny even while pushing through draconian reform, Dan seemed fucking convinced that all he had to do was dab Just for Men on his hairline and the electorate would welcome back a party that – apart from the progressive Mussolini – consisted almost entirely of Ben Swaynes and was being spun by a bunch of semi-striking Scottish exiles.

Dan thought he was a rockstar, and over the past three years Olly had watches his head inflate to the size of Texas. There was the swearing, there were the tantrums, there was the poorly-disguised drug habit and the magazine of women in big knickers (who fucking bought their porn from newsagents, now?) and the vein in his skull and the endlessly sleek knight-of-the-left media image and surely it would soon be obvious that Dan was as mad as toast. Olly spent much of his time disguising the fact, and a sizeable proportion of the remainder dealing with Dan’s pique that despite a change of PM, five years of unpopular coalition, and spiralling fear, loathing and low capital growth in practically every country Britain had ever had dealings with, the government had survived and he still wasn’t king yet.

In some ways, Olly understood his pique. He thought the Coalition was a fucking miracle too. They had twats like Fergus and Mannion for goodness’ sake – Mannion with the lovechild and the anti-Semitic tongueslip (Jews! He’d accidentally insulted the Jews!) who was inexplicably tipped for Mayor of London, nonetheless – and Fergus with the scary Alpha Course wife whom everyone, even Adam the puckered arsehole, detested.

And yet they were still in government, and sometimes (but only sometimes, because since fucking over Malcolm Olly’d buried decency and self-perception so deep they’d be found only by Time Team and sniffer dogs and possibly Sam if she did that face that recalled Olly’s mum), just _sometimes_ Olly thought that might not reflect very well on him.

It wasn’t that anybody missed Malcolm – or that, if they did, they didn’t immediately refer themselves for some fucking necessary and interrogatory psychiatric tests – but once or twice Olly had caught a whisper. Only a whisper, as incorporeal and unpredictable as Malcolm and his worst shapeshifter tendencies had been, but it was there. Malcolm may have been toxic and ghastly and everything the post-Goolding administration had righteously and emphatically left behind, but he – and the midget fuckjob whose name Olly claimed he no longer remembered – well, they had been efficient. They’d had _ideas_.

And he doubted that – if _they’d_ ever had a fucking scary predecessor released from prison, which in some alternate-universe Glasmafia hell they might – they’d have spent the morning hiding in their office, avoiding their boss and trying to beat their stepbrother’s highest score on Angry Birds.

There was no way Dan was going to get his majority.

 

 

As far as Jamie was concerned, any poor sod who turned up in Britain, providing they didn’t want to vote Tory, cut off lassies’ hands, plant bombs or support Rangers, should be immediately invited to pull up a fucking chair.  Foreigners abroad, however, he hated, with especial virulence if they were fucking _French_ , or German, or Yanks. Having been told once by Malcolm that Hitler wasn’t actually German – after three hours, Malcolm hit him over the head with a laptop set to Google– Jamie had temporarily added Austrians to the list, but then he’d found out they had the highest speed limits in Europe, a particular blessing to a man never very far from a ticket. Exceptions were made for attractive lasses and Celtic transfers. But immigration? Jamie was all for it. Shove up and pass the bottle.

It was with somewhat conflicted feelings, however – and, to be fair, with his brain if not gushing then certainly _dripping_ blood into his skull – that Jamie staggered out of the driving seat to discover that the delivery van who’d just fucked him contained half a dozen confused Somalians whose sweat-bathed driver had taken an extremely wrong turning at Portsmouth.

In the normal spirit of things, Jamie would have glad-handed them, offered and then hastily withdrawn the offer of a pint, half-emptied his bank account and advised them on the best strategies for fucking those cunts at UKBA. As it was, though, half of his and Claire’s car was rammed back into the other half like the snout on some overbred dog, he was late for his wee Ruthie who had no other way of getting those fucking pet rocks (now everywhere on the tarmac) and, crucially, there was an Enoch Powell extravaganza making its way down his face and out of his mouth. The result was that the Somalians – who spoke little English, and certainly not Jamie’s– were confronted by a blood-stained and staggering dwarf, who with one splaying hand was trying to offer them a fiver, and who with the other was throttling the sky.

And then, inevitably, he stopped shouting at them and fell over.


	3. The Pursuit of Liberty Is Still A Noble Cause

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of ex-convicts, ex-pressmen, old friends, bad news and lives not (really) lived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite all the fools and liars  
> Despite all of the wars  
> The pursuit of liberty is  
> Still a noble cause

They weren’t, as she had feared, two wary strangers.

In the first few seconds, with the late-midday sun slanting over his even-shorter hair and making him, like the light, full of angles, he hadn’t even seemed much older.

He was, of course, a little unfamiliar: with her, and with the world around him. Before the door was fully opened, he looked cautious. He surveyed the group on the pavement in silence. Then he saw her, and although his expression didn’t change, his eyes did. He walked straight across, head level, eyes professionally guarded, and if Sam’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, she knew not to get out of the car, not to cry, and definitely not to rip that bloody fleece off his back. His new shirt and one of his best suits were in a bag on the back seat.

Determinedly, she kept eye contact and kept smiling while Frankie (holding a grip bag of Malcolm’s effects, most of which Sam longed to chuck in the nearest canal) guided him past the knot of press bastards, and was really managing nicely until Malcolm turned, flicked on the charisma switch and created an almost physical effect when he smiled and told the journalists he was delighted to have won his appeal and had his convictions quashed, but was most looking forward to seeing his family again. At this point, with the press reeling with the hope that he might swear, or breathe fire, or just make a definitive statement on the biography/film rights/serialisation rumours, Sam gazed at their masochistically happy faces and bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood. Sue Donnelly, née Tucker, had been attempting to contact her brother for weeks, and although Malcolm nominally had an arrangement to be met off the Glasgow train later the following afternoon, Sam knew he wouldn’t make it.

He opened the door and climbed in behind the driver’s seat and as soon as all doors were shut again, Sam heard him exhale. Their eyes met in the rear view mirror; hers crinkled into a smile, and he did likewise.

He looked exhausted, relieved and profoundly grateful. Both hoped that their smiles concealed their awareness of the same thing: that Malcolm, in those first seconds of gazing at the crowd, hadn’t just been looking for journalists. Frankie collapsed in beside him (Malcolm diplomatically shifted the bag), and off they went.

 

 

 

Seeing Malcolm across the threshold of her flat was absurd. He was moving so carefully, gazing at the soft furnishings, books and furniture like a wistful orphan child in some sort of interior décor Christmas.

He’d looked through the cards and letters Sam had retrieved for him (the majority of the built-up post, she’d either answered herself or hidden behind the boiler) very slowly, with stilted conversation, until a singularly pompous and heavily-italicised missive of congratulation from Julius Nicholson (no doubt the product of nights of agonised composition, Sam thought, remembering how the baldy ponce had gazed at Malcolm) had made him snort and the accompanying _muffin basket_ had made all three of them hoot aloud.

This was rather better than she’d dared hope; handing the letters across had been a bad moment, although it was hardly likely that Jamie would put pen to paper (Sam was one of the few people who knew the reason for that) or select the kind of creamy, crisply-ironed stationery favoured by Malcolm’s few returning friends. Frankie had looked uneasier and uneasier until Sam kindly asked him to open some wine, when he lightened hugely and ventured a few faltering jokes.

In fact, everything was going well until Sam showed Malcolm his new phone. It had been one of a dozen preparations; food in the fridge, coffee by the percolator, energy tariffs switched and (after some thought) new sheets and pillows for the bed. She’d been shopping at his request and on his credit card; the problem was that Malcolm reacted to the new iPhone like a vampire seeing garlic and, in technological terms, had apparently aged five hundred years. He _had had_ an iPhone, Sam reminded him tersely, but Malcolm seemed to think that switching from Blackberry had been the symbolic cause of all downfalls, and was peering colourlessly at the screen like a defrosted cryogenic caveman.

He couldn’t work the latest touch screen: Frankie, after properly respectful agreements that Apple was indeed the work of the devil, had discovered that Malcolm’s fingers didn’t seem to register on the phone’s sensor – the electronic equivalent of having no reception – and that he was unaccountably enraged by the new apps. What the fuck was Snapchat? What worried Sam – who had of course seen bagels thrown at doors – was that she suspected Malcolm _knew_ he was being unreasonable.

Malcolm knew, in fact, that he looked and seemed like a geriatric, cadaverous bastard, but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do. Being back was such a shock. Sam was sterling, she was a fucking saint, and if anything that made it worse. Not unlike Julius’s basket of baked fucking cock-offerings, which had confirmed his debilitating senility by actually making him want to greet.

As the afternoon wore on, Malcolm was starting to get twitchy, which only increased when Frankie bolted into the hall to answer a call, and came back looking nauseous and shifty. Malcolm knew it was incumbent upon him to _do_ something (especially if, as he suspected, Frankie’s wife objected to him spending the start of the weekend with his ex-jailbird boss), but the longer he sat on Sam’s sofa, the more incapable he felt.

And he _didn’t want_ to go to Glasgow. Malcolm had been the only Scot in his wing of the prison, and Frankie’s voice – although not the right one – kept making his heart skip a beat.

He couldn’t cope with more. Every time a door buzzed elsewhere in the building; every time a car pulled up or a passer-by laughed on the street, he had to voluntarily tense each muscle to keep from casting a desperate, pitiful look in its direction. Despite having practiced self-controlled invisibility throughout his sentence, wine and central heating were making him less subtle than he’d hoped.

It was almost a relief when Malcolm’s phone rang, and flashed up a number.

A number that Sam, with her attention to detail, had meticulously relabelled “Claire Macdonald – Mob” and when Malcolm answered it to the imaginary sounds of figurative chickens electrically tagged and rehoming to their roosts, her efficiency was confirmed by the sound of Jamie’s wife, inhaling through her teeth to hold back a seismic wave of tears and ask, _is he with you?_

 “Is he with you, then? Is that what – he’s run off with you?”

A second’s worth of hope, and then Frankie’s face which looked fucking imbecilic (that meant nothing) and then Sam looking reticent and concerned (that was worrying) and then high and horrible in the background of the phonecall, Jamie’s baby crying. And Jamie would never have left a bairn to cry like that.

If you’ve been waiting all year for a hammer blow, it’s a relief when it finally falls. Sacking, disgrace, humiliation and imprisonment had set the bar for emotional onslaught rather high, and since Malcolm had been out of the business of deduction and obliteration for two years (the success of his appeal had rested largely on Malcolm _not saying anything_ , and on Baroness Sureka having had her coke habit exposed), it took a moment for the pieces to reform.

It’s said that the decapitated head registers thought and feeling for a second after the axe has severed its spinal cord; some cognition flickers between the report of a revolver, and the fatal haemorrhage through your soft palate. People look surprised when they’re stabbed, and a strangling victim can be saved after up to eleven seconds of suffocation.  Malcolm registered that he was taking a very long time to drown.

“You bastard, where is he? Have you finally done it?”

Claire was trying to soothe the wee yin, but her voice was circling upwards and upwards with stress. “You always meant to. He was supposed to pick her up at two, Malcolm. That’s when nursery finishes. But they called me and said it was half past and Nellie was still there – “ _They called her Nellie._ Claire’s panic was overtaking rage. “A wee baby girl. And he’d – Ruth’d left her bloody rocks for Fossil Week, and they’re _not here_ so he _must_ have come back and I’ve rung his work, puir bastards, I rang Frankie and he – you just got out today, you _cunt_ , why did you _do this_?”

Sam was trying to take the phone from the hand. It was like touching dead flesh.  There was cataclysmic disaster on the end and all-too-evidently Malcolm and the unseen Claire were reaching an agreement that the fires of hell had been lit in Malcolm’s name, that war and AIDS and the failure of perestroika were his fault, and that the current state or otherwise of one itinerant, belligerent Scotsman who wore his heart on his sleeve along with the entrails of his enemies was Malcolm’s fault.

She could see Malcolm’s tenuous grip on reality being prised off in front of her. It was unclear whether his eyes still had pupils, and, if so, whether they conformed to the standard human design.

“ – Claire,” Malcolm rasped, after a second. It was the kind of noise you might make if you dredged a canal, then pushed all the scrap metal through an old-fashioned mangle to clean it.  He could still hear the baby crying. “I havenae seen him. Listen, darlin’,” – _fuck you_ , Claire interjected, on principle, “ – I _haven’t_. Where are you now?”

“At home, of course, with my three terrified daughters – “ here Claire’s voice dropped to a hiss, as if one of those daughters – the ones not currently screaming in her ear – had entered the room.

“Is that a car?” Malcolm was straining to hear.

Frankie, gnawing a hangnail and wondering if a car meant continued possession of his entrails, made the mistake of shifting his posture from abject to hopeful. A look from Sam stopped this. She was standing beside Malcolm, trying to hear.

And then they realised Claire was screaming.

“It’s the police. Oh god. Fuck, fucking Christ, no. Oh – I’ve got to - “

Malcolm took the phone away from his ear; Sam stopped him actually dropping it – Claire had hung up, _shit_ – and they both took a step towards Frankie. A second later, Frankie was holding Malcolm by the arm; nothing had happened where his legs ought to have been. He gripped the younger man’s wrist so hard that the pain was biting.

“Car,” he managed. “You, get your car. What’re the – we’re away to Brighton.”

“Shouldn’t we wait, Malcolm, I’m trying her again – ” Malcolm gazed at her and Sam felt sick. Frankie shifted anxiously.

“Eh, she’s right – _shit_ , Malc – “ The pain was now crushing.

“You knew about this half an hour ago. I’ll remember. Now get your fucking keys. Sam?”

“She’s not picking up,” admitted Sam, and then, because Malcolm was going grey again. “She’ll be on her way to the hospital. If it were – they’ll have come to take her to the hospital. We could wait to know more – “

“Can’t be that many fucking hospitals,” he insisted. “Not in Brighton. And today – Christ. I –“ he was hoarse, and gesturing to the bag: for a second, Sam was baffled, but then memory catapulted back to her. She and Frankie scrambled simultaneously for his inhaler (apparently HMP had had the foresight to top it up).

“What if he’s dead?” Malcolm asked, the second it was safe to take the inhaler from his mouth.

“He won’t be,” Sam insisted, in her most quelling tones. Two idiot Scottish men were staring at her in the hope she’d rationalise the cataclysmic mess of their lives, and the sense of homesickness was outrageous. “Brighton. I’ll call Claire again on the way.”

 

 

 

It had been a toss-up, in more ways than one, whether the young Jamie Macdonald would join the church or the army. The latter had the advantage of bashing foreigners and being with your pals, but the former seemed to give you less chance of three years in a military gaol, and when he talked about that one, Jamie’s mam hadn’t started to cry. She’d been proud, and until the day Malcolm Tucker had a political argument in the pub where trainee priests nursed their hangovers, argued football and tacitly missed their mams, Jamie had never had cause to regret the cloth.

After Malcolm had come along, advocating Marxist literature, revolutionary principles, the wearing of earrings (at least for the next two years) and more fascinating oratorical bravado than even the sacred-sacrilegious idiolect of the old priests had demonstrated, Jamie had just wanted to be where he was.

He’d fought it, of _course_ , because Malcolm was a jumped-up twisty bastard who’d turned away from Mother Church and said unforgiveable things about her like a godless heathen shitehead. He’d fought the skinny twat’s recusancy – loudly and enthusiastically, over pints and chips and occasionally quietly on the roofs of their friends’ scratty flats – right up until the moment the skinny, shit-spinning bastard with his hair and his _handwriting_ and his fucking impossible _mind_ sneered one too many smart-alec comments and got his face smacked in the bar of that very same Motherwell pub.

With the force of an Old Testament God and the voice of the whale that ate Jonah, Jamie had hurled himself like a living thunderbolt across the length of the bar and onto the fifteen-stone, prop forward body of Malcolm’s momentary attacker, and if Malcolm ended up with a bruised cheek while doctors picked glass out of Jamie’s chin and reset his nose in Leith Infirmary, beneath his wounds, Jamie was shining.

Fighting for Malcolm – as a journalist, then as his henchman – had been brilliant. Better than God or country. But as Jamie struggled for consciousness – and although he didn’t know it, momentarily for _life_ – he dreamt briefly that everything had gone the other way.

He’d never been a seminarian, never looked up and seen the door swing open on a fucking Baltic night when they’d already rung for the last orders, never seen Malcolm purple round the eyes, high-collared, strung out on the daily special, arguing politics, fucking stupid half a punk, half a fucking _girl_ with his eyes and his hair. He’d seen the bruise under his cheekbone, never stared at that cheekbone for fifteen fucking minutes before wanting a wall to put his fist through. Never gone across and mentally chucked his heart at Malcolm’s feet, and then his brain and his cock and his intestines, for good measure and just in case the big poof didn’t get the message (he never had).

Never taken up smoking just for a chance to get his face in that face. Never heard the music or done coke or woken up with his face smashed in Malcolm’s shoulderblades or broken a story or punched Malcolm’s da or punched Malcolm’s wife’s da or followed the git to London or handed him his firstborn child and watched her coil her perfect finger around his prematurely wizened thumb and wanted to volunteer for them on the spot, for the barricade or the guillotine or whatever Malcolm said came next. He'd have made himself Prime Minister if it meant standing there with the two of them forever, three a.m. light and a frost outside the hospital, and Malcolm's face as he looked down at Maggie.

Instead, in Jamie's dream (a gentle dream, a long way from the blood-bags and the trolleys and the electrics on his chest) he’d gone in the army; nice sensible fucking army, where you didn’t have to wrangle God or black eyes or wee yins with their bags of rocks. He’d signed up for the army; he’d been there, he’d bled there, now they were airlifting him back. He’d been wounded. They were taking him out of the desert. He was a hero again. Soon he’d be home.


	4. I Saw My Revolution Sold To A Priest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm remembers where it all went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw my revolution sold to a priest  
> I saw the men of reason bow down to the east
> 
> And oh, it's better to know  
> Oh, it's better to know.

On the way to Brighton, Malcolm veered between a thought and a memory.

The thought was that the last time he’d ever contacted Jamie, it had been a passive-aggressive cuntswipe email about his fucking locksmith. Telling Jamie that since he’d be in prison, he’d been advised to have extra security on the house. Sam’d be coming in but Jamie’s key now wouldn’t work. It was the first and last time Malcolm had referred to the existence of that key, one which Jamie had never used since leaving London. It was a fucking pointless email, which merited slightly less than the reply it received – _ok_ , just that one fucking word, _ok_   - but to Malcolm it had felt like stripping off his flesh and using his heart to paint the walls of the living room.

He could admit that now. Jamie leaving London (he still couldn’t think _leaving him_ ) had been less a reorganisation of Malcolm’s emotional infrastructure than a wrecker ball and an autobahn through his psychological urethra.

That was where it had started. He’d always known, _always_ fucking known that the rot had grown in the space Jamie left, and that the gap was where the wolves got in. It had been obvious from the first day, but he’d never admitted it. Not even in the prison cell, which he’d been stupid enough to think had been his punishment. Nothing had punished him before today.

The memory was more insidious. This wasn’t the first time Jamie had gone missing.

The night they’d met, Malcolm had been on one of his trips back to Motherwell, away from the paper. A week later, he went back to work and to his flat, and Jamie – despite their friendship (which still mainly consisted of Jamie haranguing him for being a heathen, while hating everyone who stood close to Malcolm and following him about with gleaming eyes) being of significantly shorter-standing than Malcolm’s journalism and lease – took it personally and behaved like a rejected spouse.

When he finally turned up on Malcolm’s doorstep, it was after nearly a fortnight of radio silence, unanswered letters ( _letters_ ) and unverifiable sightings in a variety of mildly arty and sometimes seriously frightening pubs near Malcolm’s patch, none of whom were accustomed to serving a miniature cleric who talked shit about writers and then tried to fight the walls. Malcolm had been scared he was dead.

One night, with the rain running down the road and all the vegetation dead and none of it sadder than Jamie with his big drowned drunk eyes, Malcolm found him leaning up against the ginnel wall, and let him sleep over. Apart from Malcolm, they were already two to a room, with one of Ronan’s brothers on the sofa. Everyone in the flat but Malcolm was in a punk band.

Jamie picked his way through the detritus of the living room, to Malcolm’s preternaturally clean bedroom, at which point he forgot his stance of miserable reproach, wedged himself into the windowsill and – grinning down at the railway lines a vertiginous twenty feet below – chattered away about fitba and Celtic and how he’d chinned some bastard who wrote for the other paper, right, Malc? Malcolm kept his back to him while sorting out a coat for him to sleep under, and a spare pillow to put on the floor, and tried to keep a very-fucking-airtight lid on what the _hell_ was happening in his bloodstream. The fortnight without Jamie had been as unsettling as the week with him, but this feeling – of seeing the cat that came back, the fleabitten scrap that turned up with its ear missing and explained to you how it’d punched a tiger – was an unignorable diagnosis.

Impressing girls was exhausting. Measuring up to their estimation, working out what the _fuck_ would pass for passable and then going to buy that coat, shirt, book or record, watching minute-by-minute to see if it worked, always from a starting point of inadequacy. It didn’t help that he habitually fell for posh haughty bitches who were intrigued by his accent but expected a working knowledge of Europe and a more than half-decent bar, where he could pay the tab. But impressing Jamie? One word from him and Malcolm felt like master of the world.

Glancing up at the mirror, watching Jamie rub his wet head on one of the tea-towels Malcolm kept hidden his room (along with bog roll, rolling papers, and a private supply of bleach), Malcolm could see that he’d started to let his hair grow. On night five of their acquaintance, Jamie had turned up with one of his earlobes practically scabbing off with black crusted blood and a wonky gold ring stabbed in the middle of it. He’d been wobbly from near-miss exsanguination, but full of an expression Malcolm would come to know well: shit-eating, dog-with-two-dicks delight that made his eyes dance. He looked young and crushable and hopeful about life in a totally unwarranted way, and Malcolm hadn’t been able to take his eyes off him.

Tonight, as the tiny zealot talked without pause about the Penguin books he’d bought (and how Malcolm hoped he’d _bought_ them), Malcolm suspected that Jamie – unless he’d been truffle-hunting in the coal pits – had also started the night with his kohl around his eyes. His hair was still rich in rainwater, and his smile took up all the space in the room. Malcolm rested ten fingertips on his desk (a door across breeze blocks – he’d nearly had an asthma attack wrestling it all up the stairs) and promised himself he’d stay sane. Even if he’d started to feel fucking jealous of those footballers whose names Jamie’d self-tattoo’d on his arm two days shy of eighteen.

That night, an exhausted Jamie wrapped himself around Malcolm’s overcoat (it was an omen) and appeared to die: apparently Jamie slept with the same instant intensity with which he did everything else.

Malcolm lay and watched him for a long time, then woke again to a sound like his uncle Pat’s terrier being kicked. With the lamp on, it turned out to be a somnolent Jamie having a whimpering fist-fight with the floor. Coat and carpet were equally trying to kill him; the sobs increased in desperation, and Malcolm, confused both by the noise and by having fallen asleep so easily, slithered out of his bed and tried, shivering, to wake the thrashing bundle in some way that kept him his nose and his jawbone.

Years later, in the distance of a Brighton-bound Mercedes, the fifty-five-year-old Malcolm would yearn for the certainty of Jamie on that floor, for the overheated guerrilla sweat of his head on Malcolm’s arm. He’d remember the anger that’d spiked in his stomach at the realisation that anything could make the wee termageant sound so frightened, when Malcolm had finally taken possession of him; that _anything_ , no matter how monstrous a fabrication of Jamie’s own dented head, would dare, when here they were, under the same roof. And when he remembered that righteous anger, Malcolm – the older Malcolm, so far from the boy on the floor – would taste bile at having abandoned those responsibilities.

Nothing scared Jamie, but now he was stuttering awake, teeth almost chattering, eyes wild and frightened but knowing Malcolm immediately, and making it _so easy_ (because back then, everything _was_ so fucking _easy_ ) for Malcolm to murmur _pet_ and _whisht_ and tell him softly what a daft cunt he was, and safe. Jamie only shuddered and used his hands (glued to Malcolm’s shoulders), to press himself closer, which (for Malcolm) was exactly like drinking a bottle of vodka all at once.

Evidently to Jamie, it seemed entirely natural to be coiled round Malcolm on a grotty shared-house floor, breathing damp and opened-mouthed against Malcolm’s t-shirt, his spine jumping under Malcolm’s comforting hand. Malcolm felt like he was being cracked open, sanity out first. He’d held girls, fucked them, and there’d been one cautious, careful lad who hadn’t been edited out of the mental history quite as surely as he supposed, even though _poof_ was right up there with _Tory_ and _poor_ on the list of things Malcolm was determined to abjure. But there was Jamie, clinging to him like they were drowning.

Ah, he thought (for the first and potentially last time in his life), _fuck it_.

“ – m’sorry.”

Malcolm shushed him, stroked his hair. “Jamie. What was it?”

“Nothin’. Stupit. _Kid_ stuff.”

“None of that. …come on, pet, you’re freezing.” Jamie gave a big, brave sniff that was so resolutely neither big nor brave that Malcolm half-smiled against his hair. There was a certain relief in just _giving in_ and behaving like a fucking lunatic.

Jamie looked somewhat surprised when he realised he was being allowed into Malcolm’s bed, but since he was nothing if not a sexual opportunist convinced of his right to Malcolm’s body, body heat, and additional extras without VAT, he conquered the wariness and slid right in. Malcolm heard himself mutter _nothing’s gonnae hurt you_ and some tiny sliver of still-extant self-respect was appalled and died.

With something which might have been pride or which might have been degenerative neurological putrefaction, he decided Jamie was calming down, but when Malcolm reached to turn out the light, Jamie nearly bolted from the bed, and a second later the pitiful trembling began again.

“You’re safe, you daft cunt. C’mon, tell us.”

Heavy head against his chest, as Jamie refused and curled closer.

Malcolm could feel heat spreading across his breastbone and up his throat, and just then, because he wasn’t very old, and because before Jamie turned up (tonight) he’d been drunk and alone and because before Jamie turned up (full stop) he’d hated every breath that wasn’t politics or writing or selling the Socialist Worker and actually, fuck it, he’d hated selling the Socialist Worker, which really only left politics and words and (maybe music) and Jamie, he pressed his lips into Jamie’s hair, and, shutting his eyes tight, blurted out (because he was irrevocably fucked and _this_ was the memory that made his older self chuck his head back in the car, and fist his own seatbelt, and think he might throw up on Sam’s feet, preferably until he’d vomited his brain stem), “Was the dream – was it your da?”

Jamie ricocheted. He stared up at Malcolm with those blue altar-cloth eyes, Catholic-boy, fathomless, that in a darker and less acceptable moment Malcolm might have regarded as his personal Kryptonite, except now Jamie was staring at him in horror and Malcolm was uncomfortably unsure whether it was the kiss or the paternal nightmare.

“ _No_ ,” Jamie insisted, looking all of sixteen and appalled until understanding rushed in, making everything ten times worse for Malcolm with his boulder-force compassion. “Fuckin’ _hell_ , Malc. Jesus.” They were lying facing each other, Jamie gaping at him, Malcolm trying to memorise the wonky stitching on Jamie’s t-shirt and avoid his eyes. He saw Jamie swallow, and felt his own mouth go completely dry. The last and only time Malcolm’s cock had been this close to another cock, the situation had been a lot more anonymous and distinctly more tactical.

With a rough exhale, Jamie confessed: “It’s bein’ cold and there’s no food. And there’s a beastie coming for me and I’m on my own so he’ll make it.” He nudged Malcolm with one knee and, reflexively, Malcolm trapped it between his own. “Tell me about your da.”

And for some reason, Malcolm had _told him_. First of all in fragments; two children cowering in the stinking ginnel like every Glasgow novel ever written; lying on the kitchen floor with fragments of broken glass beneath his cheek. His mam stubbing pan-stik around her eye socket, Sunday morning with gran’s hymns on the radio before church; the belt and his da’s justifications for it. And then the longer story, which he couldn’t seem to stop before the end

When Jamie’d found out John Tucker’s postcode and sworn without words for some time, he dragged Malcolm closer, head on Jamie’s insanitary chest, and Malcolm slept as if he’d died.

When Malcolm woke up in the morning, he went out and spent a small fortune on eggs, pig product and white sliced, and came back to find Jamie wearing his dressing-gown and inflicting an argument on the most gullible and self-aggrandising of Malcolm’s housemates, an art student with a Wagner LP. Over sizzling fat and the distress call of the kettle, Malcolm caught snatches of Jamie ferreting out every detail of the poor sod’s ideology, idiosyncrasies and sexual peccadilloes. Despite himself, he found it mildly erotic.

“Great news,” Jamie announced, sitting down to more kinds of saturated fat than Malcolm would ever cook again, and to the sound of a door slamming. “That fascist bastard’s moved out. I’ll have my stuff here by four.”

And that was why. Because Jamie never mentioned Malcolm’s da again, and because one cooked breakfast was all it took for Malcolm to make Jamie’s nightmares stop forever. Because when Jamie’d finished masticating seventeen pigs, beans, and a pyramid of crumbling toast, he swaggered past and kissed Malcolm on the side of his neck, which was the most disgusting thing that had ever happened to Malcolm, but that nevertheless sealed Malcolm’s fate.

Perhaps that had been the sole day of peace in their friendship – not even a whole day, because at five-thirty Jamie had finally showed up with three bin bags of worldly goods and an extremely stolen hi-fi, and by half-past-six they had launched their first ear-shattering fight about Jolson.

Perhaps the bad times had outweighed the good. But since that day, even when all about him had been losing their heads, their ideals and their shit in Malcolm’s general direction, Malcolm had clung to two assumptions. Firstly, that he and Jamie would always have time for the latter to come to his senses. And secondly, that if they didn’t sort things out – as Malcolm insisted, stalking to the pub on their first day as flatmates, shattered plates and a Chinese burn in his wake – he would fucking well cope.

As Malcolm was learning, he'd been wrong on both counts.


	5. We've been alone for so long (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm, Sam and Frankie arrive at the hospital. We learn a little more about Jamie's history, and indeed Frankie's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And oh, it's better to know  
> Oh, I swear it's better to know.  
> Even though we're so alone  
> For so long  
> We've been so alone  
> For so long
> 
> A short chapter (really part 1 of chapter 5).

They were turned away from the first hospital, where Sam’s Roedean inquisition, Frankie’s Leith wheedling and Malcolm’s technique of standing dead still and looking as if his lifeblood were bleeding invisibly from his eyes all went down equally badly. At the second hospital, Frankie and Sam sat arguing in a parent-and-child parking bay (Malcolm stayed on the back seat; the others tried hard not to think what he might be thinking just in case he thought that was what they were thinking about and had to kill them in the reverberating coils of their own pity loop) about how to get round patient confidentiality and the fact that Claire wouldn’t answer her phone to any of Sam’s five or Frankie’s six attempted calls (plus the three extra Frankie had made while Sam drove, and the one Malcolm had secretly tried to _Jamie_ ’s phone, which had meant hearing Jamie’s own voice). They were just debating the merits of sending Franke in the guise of one of Jamie’s half-brothers, but if the NHS system cross-referenced with the police (which given Britain’s fascist overlords was likely), that risked Frankie being arrested to answer to one of our Brendan or our Gavin or (worst of all, as Frankie emphasised) our Caillen’s twocking-based peccadilloes.

“How many brothers does Jamie _have_ ,” Sam asked, with tightening frustration, only for Malcolm to say “Eight,” in a voice that suggested he might be even now penitentially tattooing their names into his leg. “Brendan, Gavin, Billy, Patrick, Caillen, Hamish, Danny, Aidan.” _Just in case they ever lost touch with their heritage_ , Sam supposed wryly. “Jamie’s the eldest. The first three are step, the last five are half.”

Sam, the only child of two Home Counties lawyers, hoped her face wasn’t doing anything indicative. She wished she had a skinny muffin on standby.

Then Frankie jumped in his seat, before desperately trying to pretend he hadn’t. She swung the rearview mirror.

A diminutive blonde woman with car keys in one hand and an overnight bag slung across her shoulder was running awkwardly across the hospital car park. As one, the occupants of the car recognised Claire’s blonde curls. The night was drawing in, but even at a distance, the waddle and the bulky shape of her coat indicated a vast pregnancy bump.

 _Shit_.

Sam supposed that the cavernous silence from the backseat was the sound Malcolm made while dying. Then the blonde vision turned, and Sam let out a small breath, coinciding neatly with Malcolm’s failure to do breathing in a normal or sustainable way.

“Och, it’s Aggie,” said Frankie, drowning in relief. “Claire’s wee sister. Fuck sake. Must be right place. I might stay here though.”

“How do you know Claire’s sister,” Malcolm enquired, in a tone neatly devoid of modulations and thus slightly more frightening than the Marquis de Sade’s boggart.

“ – and why d’you have to stay here?” Sam narrowed her eyes. Frankie made a palm-spreading, self-exonerating gesture that was less convincing than a Lib Dem manifesto. From the razor-burn up, he was turning the colour of over-ripe plums.

“She doesnae like me. Made a pass at her at Mags’s confirmation. Eh, Sam, me and Shel wisnae together and the bump’s no _mine_ , don’t get that face.”

“You were at Maggie’s confirmation?” Malcolm clarified, leaning forward between Sam and Frankie’s seats. “You’ve been seeing them?”

Frankie shifted.

With God-given clarity, Sam knew that he was about to utter some variation on _you ken how it is, Malc_ which would either provoke a Malciavellian bullet-pointed breakdown of how and why he didn’t fucking know that anymore (with real bullets), or might just make Malcolm self-immolate.

Sam’s experience of married-friends-with-children revolved around Waitrose picnics and fairly-traded toys, and she found it difficult to fit the Macdonalds into that paradigm of piano recitals and John Lewis upholstery. But there was clearly something dancing in front of Malcolm’s eyes, something which Frankie had stolen.

Wavering, and glancing from Malcolm to Sam, Frankie just risked a shoulder shrug. “Shel and Claire – our Sean wis a Caesarean, just like wee Nellie. She talked her through. And she doesnae mind me.”

 _Not like you_ hung heavy in the air.

“How’s he been?” Malcolm asked, unexpectedly and horrifically, and Sam met Frankie’s last-chopper-from-Saigon eyes in the mirror and, as one, started undoing their belts and opening the doors. Horror-style, a skeletal hand zipped forward and pinned Frankie’s terrified shoulder to the carseat. Sam suddenly remembered the only statement Jamie had ever made on the subject, shifty and a bit triumphant, the night after Malcolm had caught him counter-briefing Fatty: that the skinny fey freak was ridiculously fucking strong whenever he wanted to be. Frankie was making a terrified face at her and seemed on the verge of wailing for his mum. “I asked you, Frankie, how’s he been?”

And Frankie, because he was cannon fodder, because he was stalwart, because he’d survived three incarnations of the Press & Comms department including the one where the new boss’s half-mad friend from Motherwell turned up and instantly became a much hairier and swearier version of Lady Macbeth, looked Malcolm straight in the eye via the protective surface of the rearview mirror, and told him: “Not very happy, Malc.” He exhaled. “Older. Quieter. No’ like…  but he loves those girls.”

“I’ll fucking kill the cunt who suggests otherwise,” Malcolm snarled, and sat back. Very quietly, Frankie began massaging his shoulder. Sam resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

“If we’re going, we should go. Frankie – Malcolm, are you ready?”

Now it was her turn to meet his gaze in the mirror, and he didn’t look so frightening any more.


	6. We've been alone for so long (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The grand reunion. Sam remembers her childhood. Malcolm makes an entrance. Frankie makes himself scarce, and Claire makes herself extremely clear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And oh, it's better to know  
> Oh, I swear it's better to know.  
> Even though we're so alone  
> For so long  
> We've been so alone  
> For so long

Now they knew Jamie was in the hospital, sending Sam ahead to follow the tiny blonde towards a high dependency ward seemed a far better idea than accosting an administrator and trying to blag admission. Sam’s Plan B was to present Malcolm as an acute case if necessary – he was now grey and dragging his steps slightly – but for now she settled for tailing Aggie while the two men (both effectively blacklisted), kept a discreet distance.

Being an excellent PA meant an intimate knowledge of your boss’s diary, desk, diet, and plan for world domination. It didn’t mean – perhaps specifically excluded – sharing the hellpit of his mind. This was something she’d wanted to tell Malcolm several times, most recently at the doors of the hospital, when, just for a second, and in a passable imitation of the Grim Reaper’s leisurewear-clad brother, he’d drifted noiselessly level with her shoulder and whispered, _Sam_ , _he widnae have done this deliberately_ , _eh_?

As he followed her along the corridors, it was quite clear that Malcolm thought Jamie was dead. Frankie hadn’t expressed any opinion and Sam was trying not to have one.

Death and Jamie just seemed incompatible.

When Sam was a little girl, her grandparents had lived in a large house with a long, initially immaculate garden. But over the years, her grandfather’s strength had failed; his eyesight degenerated, and he had restricted his activities to an increasingly small area of the garden; that closest to the house. Sections closest to the perimeter had become screened off – by hedges, by tall plants – creating a kind of strategic wilderness: not without beauty, but frequently sunless, and secretive, full of ferns and unseen except from the highest floor of the house. Sam’s parents, worried equally by their only child’s propensity for solitude and by her near-eidetic memory for family secrets, often deposited her at the house when her cousins were in residence. These children, older than Samantha, would dare her to walk into the farthest section of the garden, one closed off by a hedge. It was overhung by a hairy, scratching willow tree, smelt of the woodpile, and was frequently without light. Urged into the sunless cage of hedge and hanging baskets, Sam had measured each step in terror of where it might lead.

Following Jamie’s sister-in-law through hospital corridors, Sam saw few similarities with the frightened little girl, inching her way through nightmares drawn more from books and overheard conversations than from visuals of ferns and trees. But now, she found herself holding her breath at every corner, willing Aggie to choose a ward not the mortuary or chapel; a ward not the theatres. Acute not high dependency. And then Aggie slowed and hastily scrubbed her hands outside a neurological ward.

Sam glided very gently to a halt, and focused hard on trying not to cry. And then, just as the harassed, anxious Aggie resumed her waddle and was buzzed through the unit door, Sam tailgated her and caught the door with her foot. No alarm sounded. Behind her, she heard Malcolm and Frankie catching up.

She’d never _liked_ Jamie, as such. He was too loud, too gobby, and too obviously appreciative of all young women’s tits and arses. But he was funny, god knew, and even if the time he’d chinned Geoff Holnhurst for asking her out on a date had been a moment of breathtaking hypocrisy, she’d have forgiven him much for the way he made Malcolm look. Well, used to look.

The plan, such as they’d formed between Malcolm’s catatonic guilt, Frankie’s shifty anxiety and her own whirling thoughts, had been to get in and _ascertain_ the situation before Claire could have Malcolm thrown out.

After that, thoughts had run dry, except for Sam’s insistent and increasing conviction that if Jamie had even a minute’s worth of breath left in him, she was going to get him and Malcolm in the same place.

Obviously Jamie was not immortal. He had to die. But if and when he did, Sam had expected there would be a supernova of flame and battle-hail; body parts all over a battlefield; spontaneous combustion, or, at the very least, enough severed heads and thumb-bones locked in the jaws of the corpse to indicate that even if The System had Got Jamie at last, he’d taken fifty-five of its leading denizens with him. Jamie should burn, rend, explode, in somewhere less ordinary than this.

Malcolm’s feelings about what was happening were something whereof Sam could not think too hard.

Without glancing back, she peered at the various doors off the main corridor of the unit – thank god, the nurses’ station was empty – trying to wonder where she might hide Malcolm and Frankie.

At that moment, of course, Aggie stopped her own search and travail of the rooms ahead, and turned on her heel to stare at Sam. Sam saw a plump, reddened face, puffy with the final months of pregnancy – the woman’s wedding ring was cutting in to her tiny hand – and reddened eyes. She’d been crying as she drove.

The expression of suspicious dislike relaxed on registering Sam’s professional clothes, and Sam was glad that an almost involuntary gesture of respect for Malcolm was allowing her to pass for a doctor. But Frankie and Malcolm, respectively skulking and lurking in the corridor behind her, didn’t make themselves as invisible as they should have done, and Sam felt like a failed conjuror or miscreant child as Aggie’s eyes widened.

“What the _fuck_ is _he_ doing here?” she asked, and Sam was unsurprised to discover that she was Scottish too. There wasn’t time to hope she meant Frankie rather than Malcolm, who had to be the more unwelcome beggar at the feast; she did briefly hope Malcolm might have had the sense to throw himself into a _bin_ for hiding, except oh god it’d probably be a sharps bin, wouldn’t it. Aggie stalked back towards her, wrenched the door, and scrunched as much of Malcolm’s fleece into her tiny bloated fist as water retention would allow.

Which was, of course, the moment that an alarm began to wail in a room at the far end of the unit, sending previously-invisible staff swarming from all corners, and effectively cutting off Aggie and Malcolm’s altercation by bringing a woman out of that room; a white-faced woman barely taller than the schoolgirl beside her, and who held a blonde toddler on her hip.

The woman was Claire Macdonald, her eyes smudged with tears, and the children – joined, a second later, by a middle-sized waif – were the Macdonalds’ daughters. With difficulty (the toddler was starting to sniffle), she hugged both her elder daughters to her, flattening them against the wall so they weren’t knocked down by the brief staff stampede. Seeing her, Aggie dropped Malcolm’s fleece and waddled across; Claire made a noise like a sob and went to her. Impeded by bump and baby, the two sisters hugged. For a second, it looked like Claire was sagging against Aggie, but at a worried noise from Ruth, she forced herself upright.

“He’s ripped out his tubes,” she explained, nodding exhaustedly towards the door, from which two cross-looking junior doctors were now emerging, at a distinctly slower pace.

Sam would never know exactly what Malcolm, still behind her, _did_ at that moment. But at those magical words – the idea of a Jamie still able to resist intubation and botch well-meant interventions by people with letters after their name; a Jamie who could cause havoc and blight the lives of people who’d been to university – he obviously did _something_ , even if only send up an invisible flare into the bleach-filled air. Because, a second later, the face of Jamie’s wife was turned towards Malcolm, and her look of weary distress turned to rage.

Surrounding Claire, though, were the upturned faces of three little girls, whom Sam, on a moment’s reflection, found frankly terrifying, because somehow Jamie had cloned himself and then hidden inside three child costumes of varying sizes, now complete with blonde ringlets and dimples. The littlest one, a stocky toddler, looked as if she might eat you while you slept.

But the tallest, a skinny girl in a crumpled school uniform, had broken from her mother. There was a cry, audible above the alarm, of _Uncle Malc_ and as Jamie’s eldest daughter bolted down the corridor and into Malcolm’s arms, it was impossible to mistake her delight.

The middle one, paler, with a ponytail rapidly cannibalising her Alice band, began to follow, but then glanced anxiously at her mother and stopped. The youngest, now kicking to be put down, was granted her wish out of maternal reflex, and took a few fascinated steps, gazing over at Malcolm from enormous blue eyes.

At his name on Maggie’s lips, Sam saw Malcolm reel as if he were winded. His gaze flickered to Claire for a second, but Sam guessed correctly that the child would win. She stretched her arms around Malcolm’s neck and he hid his face in her hair.

 

The bairn had been crying, Malcolm saw. Maggie – _Jamie’s_ Maggie, his goddaughter – had tears on her face, Christ she was like Jamie only younger and not mad and not with football slogans on her cheeks or a seminary bag on her shoulder or fucking _dying_ in a hospital bed except _not dying_ , which was all-round a considerable fucking improvement, and she was here and for the first time in five hundred fucking years somebody Malcolm loved was actually glad to see him. In the past few minutes, he’d forgotten how to feel anything but shock, and now here was Maggie, babbling _da’s crashed his car finding Ruthie’s rocks and he willnae lie down and it’s my fault_ against his shoulder which was absorbing her tears, _Malc can you make him lie down_ which was a nightmare in itself but as his brain kept telling him, _good fucking thing I kept that fleece eh Jamie your daughter’s crying on it how did you, you half-formed sod, how did anything as scrawny and insane and badly-drawn as_ you _manage something as_ beautiful _._ Mary had always said she’d never wanted kids; he’d only guessed later that that was an excuse, since he couldn’t.

“It’s no your fault, pet,” Malcolm insisted, hoarse and for the benefit of history, and Claire nearly spat.

Nellie had taken a few more steps forward, and Malcolm looked over Maggie’s shoulder at her in awe.

Sam, still a few feet away, felt the benefit of the patients’ handrail. She’d seen Malcolm deploy that expression as a lie, melting a political globule of gristly self-importance into something he could effortlessly smear across the faces of the other faction. To see him genuinely tender was unbearable.

Apparently, to see the human being peer out of Malcolm, in anything other than snarling fury or chilled defeat, it took a rotund three-year-old on a hospital ward, staggering towards him with a finger in her mouth and the violated remains of a chocolate bourbon in her hand.  And whilst Sam welcomed the news that Jamie retained enough energy to piss off his doctors, she hoped to god he intended to recover. Because Malcolm Tucker was squatting on a hospital floor with his arms extended to Jamie’s undoubtedly delinquent toddler, looking as if there was nowhere he’d rather be in the world.

Even if awed love were a sufficiently unnatural expression on Malcolm’s face to make him look slightly senile, Sam was still too ashamed to glance at Claire instead. Possibly, as a wife, it might just be better to find the used condom or the USB stick, rather than have your worst fears confirmed by having the personification of that worst fear look so fucking dotty about your children, just because they’d got the same cult-eyed face as your husband (Sam understood that she probably had ovaries. She’d just never been formally introduced).

Maggie, straightening up, watched her mother watch Malcolm and something in that inscrutable glance decided Claire. Motioning Ruth towards her aunt, she summoned her dignity – which, as the woman who’d spent thirteen years married to Jamie Macdonald, was both necessary and formidable – and walked calmly towards Malcolm.

Nellie was putting the rest of her chocolate biscuit into Malcolm’s hand. It looked almost exactly like a turd, but Malcolm assumed Claire hadn’t had time to brief the wee yin against him. He smiled companionably at Nellie, who, with embryonic judgment, smiled back. He straightened abruptly, however, as Claire reached him.

“He crashed his car into the side of a van,” she heard herself say calmly. “They didnae think he’d -” She suddenly found she couldn’t look at him, although she could feel his eyes on her. “He’s been in theatre. They’re calling it a – a subdural haem – haem – “

“ – haematoma, mam,” Maggie prompted, softly. Both adults turned to smile at her, and Claire felt a savage flare of jealousy.

“That’s right, love,” she said bravely, and forced her head back up into Malcolm’s eyeline. “He’s got a small, they’ve said it’s small, acute subdural haematoma, and they’re trying to monitor it without having tae drill into his skull. But he’s concussed, of course and – and his heart’s no’ been great.” Panic swam up and back into her vision.

“Say about the scans,” Maggie asked, nudging her mother, and somehow Claire forced herself on.

“It’s none – they’re trying to keep him stable. Monitor him over the next 48 hours. He’s got another CT scan coming up. But he willnae keep still – it’s the drugs, or the concussion maybe – and he keeps ripping his lines out and of course they cannae sedate him fully because he’s groggy enough, so it’s _really important_ , Malcolm, that he’s kept quiet.” Maggie’s eyes were like saucers, and Aggie had to hastily stifle her smaller niece’s protest. Claire wet her lips. “So, Frankie’s brought you all the way here for no reason.”

“Claire…” Frankie’s voice was wheedling. “Pet. Let him in.”

“I’m no gonnae discuss it. He’s my husband, Malcolm, and I don’t find it a very funny fucking coincidence that _this_ happens the day they’re misguided enough to kick you out of gaol.”

Behind them, the middle-sized Macdonald child was looking nervously towards the door. “Mam,” she half-pleaded, drooping beside her aunt, “Da’s making noise again. I think they’re _hurting_ him.”

Something awful spasmed in Malcolm’s face. “Claire, please,” he started, and Sam and Frankie simultaneously averted their eyes. Frankie would have to recheck the rulebook and possibly consult a priest, but he was pretty sure that morally you had to kill yourself if you’d ever heard Malcolm Tucker sound like this. “I didn’t know. I swear. I just want to see him.”

Claire felt her voice shake and hated herself for it. “Don’t bother, Malcolm. I’ve seen you make that face on television. I’ve seen Jamie do it – he used to do impressions of you all the time. Faces, voices, _everything_ you used. He thought you were a god. He made me move to London so he could find you. We had to move _here_ so we could get away from you. And just when I thought we’d done it – “

She never finished, because the alarm rang again.

Claire’s enduring memory of that moment wouldn’t be how her knees gave way but the way Malcolm looked – the unutterable fear that made him look simultaneously like a five-thousand-year-old iceman and (just for a second) a lost boy. And she’d remember how he caught her by her elbows as he started to lose her footing, so that they staggered together, like drunks in a dance. This time, nobody appeared to complain about Jamie’s drip destruction or punchy tendencies towards on-call consultants; this time there was rushing, and fear, and a glimpse, _only_ a glimpse of a white, small shape on a trolley, with lines and beeping and enough blood to mock up a fucking abbatoir, and Malcolm stood staring dazed after it for a long time, before he could connect it with Jamie. Claire remembered nothing after that, nothing except the howl that came out of Maggie’s mouth as she tried to hurtle after the trolley and was denied, and how it wasn’t her sister who caught her, or Frankie or Aggie or that posh bitch from London; it was Malcolm. And when Claire got between them, she stumbled, and so Malcolm held them up together.

 

 

 

Three hours later, they were sitting in a slightly different, slightly worse corridor, where there were no patients and no doctors, just fucking _lighting_ and boxes of _tissues_ and out of the corner of his eye Malcolm had registered a stand showing leaflets entitled _What To Do When Someone Dies_ and jesus if he still had any political clout there’d be a bonfire of _those_ atrocities by tomorrow morning.

They’d had to restart Jamie’s heart, that previously unstoppable drum. He’d been back in theatre two hours and now they were waiting to hear about recovery. Malcolm wasn’t sure if they’d need the leaflets.

Aggie had taken the children home. Sam and Frankie were somewhere, fucking _somewhere_ , and on the other side of the window there were a steady stream of blue nights as Brighton presented its stream of Saturday night drunks for dehydration, rehydration, detoxification and a thorough swabbing of their orifices.

Claire was sitting in silence, hands in her lap, feet tucked away and her coat across her knees. He’d bought them both a polystyrene cup of coffee an hour ago, and she hadn’t sucked out his eyes and spat them into the stairwell, which was an improvement. Aggie had been extremely reluctant to leave her sister with what she called _that bastard_ , and Malcolm’s impulse was, admittedly, to take Maggie and Ruth and the bairn in his arms and never let them go, but that more to do with the fact that Jamie was possibly dying on the other side of some MDF than with sensible parenting.

It made no sense. No fucking sense. He’d never even had a cold. Deathflu, yes, once every other winter, as his concession to the fucking sky gods and saints who disapproved of his substitution of fags for veg and his refusal to consume liquids other than black coffee, alcohol, Coke products and jizz. Jamie had fucked his way through the AIDS generation with supernatural success and equally spooky sexual health. Jamie played five-a-side like it was the Cup final and chased his colleagues like it was his national sport. Jamie could have a tantrum about the weather, end a career, smoke six fags and dial up some porn before other men had even opened their eyes. Death had no call for Jamie.

All this was to overlook the obvious explanation, though, the one which Claire had so kindly pointed up and which had been obvious to Malcolm since the first knell. He’d done this. Prison had taught him there were no stories to be told, no great narratives to join the fucking dots and that the book you threatened to write was more powerful than the lines you’d actually spun every day of your working life. Malcolm had always been eminently fucking clear that his downfall wasn’t the whirligig of time bringing about its positively last greatest shits farewell tour, but a red-handed administration dropping the buck out the window, where it had landed on him. He was the wrong face at the right time; nothing more, just the cunt who’d outlasted too many others.

Except Jamie had never believed in random. He’d _known_ they were golden, that Malcolm was a fucking genius and that every step of their success was a personal telegram from the Lord Jesus Christ whereas every right-winger, eco-warrior or temperance advocate was in the pay of Satan. He knew that they were part of a bigger fucking story (Malcolm was slightly astonished to find himself recalling a time when he believed that too). If Jamie were in a position to know _anything_ , he’d be joining those big celestial dots. He’d _know_ it was Malcolm’s fault.

Not that Jamie’d ever believed in predetermination. He rejected Malcolm’s father’s confused Calvinism (less John Tucker’s religion than dogs or beer or wifebeating, but still an accessible explanation for why his son was a fully-formed shitbag) as hard as he rejected everything the bastard stood for – in fact, Malcolm hadn’t dared tell Jamie his father was a Protestant for about four years. Mentioning the violence had been easier. For a second, drifting into the memory of Jamie’s arms tight round him, that night in Glasgow, the recollection of streetcat shouting was comforting, but then he stopped himself. There was even less point magicking Jamie up into his personal ranting djinn than there was in trying to ascribe him some kind of clairvoyance. He might have been fucking good at gambling addictions and public-private fraud, but he hadn’t spotted a fucking transit van, had he?

“Christ, you do it too.” She didn’t sound angry, which was confusing, and she didn’t specify the _it_ which was even more confusing, but when Malcolm looked, she was gazing down at his hands, which were shredding half the cup and using the remainder as a basket for the shreds. “He does little pieces,” Claire reflected, the only tone in her voice that of exhaustion. “You do big spikes.”

“Psychologist’s field day,” Malcolm ventured, very cautiously, and Claire almost smiled.

“Messy. Drives me mad. They’re all – “ she couldn’t think of the word, but Malcolm nodded all the same. Something in his chest felt like grief. Thanks to certain elements of his early training not unconnected to the nightmares about which he’d told some embryonic version of Claire’s husband, Malcolm found it distinctly fucking difficult to criticise a woman outside the bounds of politics (within which, it must be admitted, he was and always had been happy to call a woman a big-arsed bitch with a gash like DoSAC – leaking, toxic, and fucking unattractive). He didn’t want to criticise the mother of Jamie’s children. He just wanted to kill her for having Jamie through all the time he’d wasted without him.

By the time the consultant knocked on the door, the emotional temperature was simmering rather than icy or engulfing furniture in flames. Ms Sharma, the consultant come to greet the dawn and receive a gimlet-eyed briefing from her colleague about the Hibernian histrionics surrounding the punchy patient in bay 5, was surprised by the lack of reaction when the two people in the relatives’ room were told that their husband and (she assumed) brother was going to live. The man, faintly familiar, looked nearly as unwell as some of the cases she’d passed in A&E. The woman, a tiny doll-bride were it not for her ravaged face, looked filthily tired. Both of them nodded, and neither asked very many questions.  They neither spoke to, nor looked at each other. Had she lingered in the doorway after bidding them goodbye, she’d have seen them watch the dawn in silence, eyes following the trail of ambulances going to pick up those vanquished by the dangers and perils of the night, and the little knot of drip-wearers and wheelchair users enjoying the morning fag.

Claire’s phone broke the silence. She stalked over to the window. On reflex, Malcolm checked his own – a text from Sam to say she was back in London, and a voicemail from Frankie, doubtless semi-gibbering. He’d agreed to drive the bairns and Aggie after dropping Sam at the station, and either Pregnant Barbie had eaten him along with the folic acid and the nutty slack, or the three witches – reflexively, Malcolm’s face cracked into his skullish approximation of a smile – had been doing their worst.

Claire sighed as she hung up. “Ruthie won’t settle. Fuck. She doesnae like Aggie. Say anything and you’re dead,” she added, scowling across on autopilot. “It’s just that she misses me. I work too much. She gets a bit…”

Malcolm let the suggestion slide its way into the silence. “You could go. I’d stay.”

“Like I said, I’ve seen you make all those faces on the telly, Malcolm.”

“Ach, you heard what the fucking doctor said. He’ll no be awake for hours. You get some shut-eye, wake up when there’s some actual proper daylight, have a shower, come back, I’ll still be sittin’ here and he’ll still be snoring on the other side o’the wall.”

“I’m no’ leaving you with him.”

“I’m hardly mounting a fucking seduction campaign,” Malcolm heard himself say, in a quiet voice he’d nearly forgotten, and something prickled on the back of Claire’s neck. Despite herself, she looked at him curiously. “I’m not here because he wants me to be. I thought he was dead.”

Claire pressed her lips together, nodded, and reached for her bag. “I’ll go. Offer me taxi money and I’ll pull your guts through your eyes. Malcolm,” she said suddenly, and it was a shock to see the anger go from her eyes. For a terrible second, and despite the black under her eyes and the sweat on her coffee-stained shirt, Malcolm was faced with the girl Jamie married. The beautiful one, one he’d been so proud of. The one he’d brought to the office that first day, when he’d tracked Malcolm down, and who, while Jamie “negotiated” his “new role” behind the locked door of Malcolm’s office (and god, in retrospect, why _hadn’t_ Malcolm let that be an euphemism) had been briefly, unforgivably left alone in the vicinity of Steve Fleming. Looking like a fucking statistic on gymslip brides – hadn’t saved her, but as things turned out, it was Steve who’d been left with a bloodied nose and a low sperm count, having lost most of his virility to Mrs. Macdonald’s bony little knee. Jamie’d wanted to flatten him, but Claire just flicked the blood from her fingertips, smiled disarmingly at the smitten masses in the Press Room (who would all, election past, be sacked and replaced by Jamie’s Gorbals minions), and introduced herself to Malcolm as if she were some beautiful Celtic princess, driven from her convent into a den of thieves. Now, three kids and a lifetime later, she still knew when to kick.

 “Malcolm. I've no idea how you really knew to come here. Or you’ve really had no contact, but.” Kick. “If he gets better… don't spoil it. Not again. I’m not saying we’re perfectly happy together, or that he loves me most in the world. I don’t think that’s how his mind works.” She swallowed, and smoothed her hands down the fronts of her thighs. “But I’m not sayin’ this to be cruel, or to stake my claim. But you’re not _it_ either. Not now. He wouldn’t pick you or me. He’d pick the girls. 'Cos he's their dad and he's theirs.” She was twisting the pendant on her neck, and Malcolm vaguely realised what the interlocking triumvirate of rings must mean. Jesus. There was probably a family portrait back at home, some cheap supermarket thing with over-exposure and scatter cushions. And he didn’t even have a picture of Jamie – he’d only ever had _one_ , for Christ’s sake, and that had got lost somewhere around 1985, he'd forgotten how. “Whatever he… whatever you may feel about him, and just – for tonight, I’m prepared to agree it’s more than - " she didn't use the word, but the disgust on her face was eloquent, " - if you actually care about him, or _them_ , just stay away. Once he’s better. I’m no’ just saying it tae keep him, though Christ knows I’m no keener on being a single mother now than I was when he had me piss on a stick back in Glasgow. I’m saying it because _we’re_ old and ugly enough, the three of us, to live with own mistakes. But the bairns aren’t. And Jamie and I, we’ve made something good. It’s not perfect, Malcolm, but it’s good. _Normal_. It's lasted.” Malcolm wondered when Fate would do the decent thing and give him that big, divinely-appointed haemorrhage. “And whether or not you planned it, the first day there was a chance of you coming back into our lives, you did, and he nearly died. So stay now, you can, and I appreciate it. But after that, you’re gone. Or we are. I can make him go when you won’t find us.” She picked up her bag. She’d had versions of that speech for years; some had made her feel humiliated, others proud. But now she could just have wept, for all of them. “He’d got over you, at last,” she said, from the doorway, and she could hear her own baffled rage and despair in the words. “He really _had_. You were _nothing_ tae him.”

 

Malcolm didn’t watch her leave. But it was the first time he’d realised that Maggie Macdonald resembled her mother.

 

Ten minutes later, that mother was sitting in the back of a taxi, head against the window, letting the cold glass and the colder day seep back into her face. It was only then that she trusted herself to reach inside her handbag for the Ziploc bag of Jamie’s effects which had been handed to her on reaching the hospital, and which – from the moment she saw Maclolm – she’d been careful to hide away. Most of it was shrapnel; detritus ranging from the bizarre to the mildly amusing. She supposed, now, that there would be time to ask Jamie _why_ he’d had a Barbie shoe, a piece of paper reading MARY DRAKE and nothing else, seventeen shredded filters, a _Clash_ badge, an orange ringpull, some obscure sums heavily crossed-out on the back of a losing Lotto stub, and a newspaper clipping about _Burke and Hare_ in the pockets of his anorak. The electronic cigarette was strangely touching. And then, there was his wallet.

She’d been so glad when he kept his old wallet, a shy gift from her in the abbreviated period of their relationship before they started having sex, rather than the beautiful one Malcolm posted. It cracked and buckled at the spine, stuffed with receipts, cards, stubs for sinister dry-cleaning and ancient raffles and handmade coupons and a solemn vow that when Nellie was twelve she, too, could get her ears pierced and eat Pot Noodle. There was a smudged, disintegrating drawing by an infant Ruth, the intended subject of which nobody could remember. It looked like a pig made of strawberry jam. There was an ultrasound picture of the fat grey blob that had become their youngest daughter (no way they could have afforded it for the first two). There was an excursion ticket from their week-long French honeymoon, the first time Jamie’d been abroad.

And there, underneath everything else, wadded almost past recognition and with wrinkles suggesting it had been crumpled and hastily re-smoothed more than once, was a passport picture. Four lads crammed into a phonebox, eighties, funny how at the time they’d never noticed that apparently the whole world was brown. Two of them Jamie’s brothers, squatting at the front – Billy with the beaming smile, gold tooth and six months off prison; Danny, the youngest, whose da was Polish (Claire had actually _met_ his da) in a white shirt and tie. A schoolboy, then. Danny had been the only one to pass his Higher Cert. Malcolm had kept him at his books; it was a story Jamie had once loved telling.

The face in the centre of the picture was Jamie; only, his blazing smile and triumphant eyes were not something Claire could face.

The one she studied was the eldest boy in the picture, a little detached in the upper left corner, a little cynical, smudged eyes and delicate features beneath a frankly astonishing mass of hair. He was trying to make his smile pass for a smirk, but you couldn’t mistake the joy. He’d been years older by the time Claire first met him, and she was astonished by how feminine he managed to look, almost fey. But then again, too scrubbed, too hard around the edges to ever be taken except for what he was: a smart boy, but one from the slums, cleaned up by a ferocious will for education and a desire for what had been kept beyond his reach.

And then – she had to look – there was Jamie, leaning back against Malcolm’s chest, Malcolm’s hand on his shoulder, looking as if that crowded photo booth were the World Cup Final, with every clichéd love-song rolled up and doled out again for good measure, right there in his eyes.

Billy was trying to be a skinhead. It might have been the poor lighting, but he seemed to have a black eye. Danny had his hair as long as Claire’s mother-in-law would have let him (which wasn’t very). And there was Malcolm, already recruiting, with his hand on Jamie’s shoulder like a lord with his dog, like an emperor with his fucking body slave.

Claire turned the picture over. It was inscribed in Malcolm’s writing, the ink dried to a scorpion-red, hot and uneven in the morning light. “If you must fucking defend my honour, try not to bleed on the family heirlooms. Never mind. Here’s my copy. Yours now. M.” She turned the photo over, and squinted hard at the group. Her eyes were starting to burn.

 _Yours now_.

Sliding the picture back into the wallet, and dropping the folded wallet back into the bag, Claire returned her face to the glass, and cried.


	7. Choose Life (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At eight o’clock that morning, Jamie Macdonald was taken off life support.
> 
> A morning diptych, including an unwilling divorcee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many thanks to everybody who's sticking with this. Chapter 8 will be along very shortly.

At eight o’clock that morning, Jamie Macdonald was taken off life support.

At six o’clock that morning, Malcolm waited for Claire to be incontrovertibly _gone_ from the hospital, and, motionless, worked out what he thought about Claire’s injunction that he should leave, as soon as Jamie got better, because to do otherwise guaranteed the destruction of the girls’ childhoods. An observer would have seen no change in Malcolm’s expression or demeanour as he sat in the corridor, looking for all the world as if he had received the terminal diagnosis, or the scan confirming atrophy.

At six fifteen, however, he got up and walked along the corridor to the recovery room where Jamie, much intubated but valiantly restitched and rebooted by the tender efficiencies of the NHS, was being kept. Malcolm sat down at the bedside and – with the air of a man who would afterwards disclaim all responsibility for this aberration by a bodily extremity – lifted Jamie’s blackened hand into his.

The room had a window. The sun was up. Malcolm sat there, holding Jamie’s hand, increasingly deaf to the punctuating beeps, because despite the affirmations of the consultant, all he could see was the cracked lips and bruised eyes of the face on the pillow, and all he could feel was the exhausted certainty that Jamie, through fate and malice and Malcolm’s own personal inadequacies, was approaching death.

At seven o’clock, Malcolm was asked if he’d like a cup of tea, and at five past seven, the nurse who brought it mistook Jamie for Malcolm’s son, a not unreasonable assumption given that Malcolm looked about eighty, and Jamie (whose angry brackish stitches made Malcolm feel sick every time he looked at them) seemed, in the bed, to have shrunk back to his size at sixteen.

Malcolm forgot to drink the tea. He was wondering why he’d wasted his last fucking email to Jamie on a spectacularly passive-aggressive infomercial about how he’d needed to implement extra security on the house while he was in prison and so Jamie’s key (Jamie’s key, from the halcyon days when Jamie was _just fucking there_ , like an over-entitled poltergeist, ready to continue the row or cannibalise the sofa or aggressively insinuate how much better he’d be at not scaring the interns if Malcolm would just bend over eight times a week) wouldn’t work any more.

The last words he might ever get to say him, and he’d done _that_ and in received the justifiable response of _ok_ without preamble or punctuation. And now he’d have given every email, text, angry phonecall, stand-up bollocking, overheard bollocking, battle-whoop, victory, borderline sexual harassment, overt sexual harassment, and every memory of a teenage Jamie stinking of booze or an adult Jamie stinking of baby sick, for just one more shouting match.

He’d sent Jamie away for no reason. He’d backed the Nutters for no reason, or for reasons retrospectively discredited by the successive disasters of Opposition and Nicola Murray.

Oh, and prison.

If Jamie had still been on his side, he wouldn’t have spent the past few months learning fucking Braille and pretending to write his memoirs with a standard-issue Biro. Jamie would have purloined the counter-evidence, planted drugs on the prosecution, contacted the Pope and shoved a bomb up the Old Bailey. He’d have taken JB hostage. He’d have done what he’d done _every day_ of their working lives and _every day_ of their fucking friendship, and the sum total of Malcolm’s contribution to that friendship seemed pretty poor in comparison with twenty-four hours of the kamikaze devotion he’d so grudgingly received.

Now Jamie was a series of blips on a fucking computer screen, and Malcolm had so thoroughly reacquainted himself with the Catholic conscience of his maternal forebears that he could have drowned himself, unworthy head first, in the now cold and skinning tea.

Which made it all the more fortunate that Jamie, at quarter to eight, woke up.

 

 

Julius Nicholson, at quarter to eight, woke up to the sound of the Today programme, his squawking mobile, and the combined cacophony of Nina, Tosca, Islay and Ella, his brother’s four appalling hounds. Canine molestation distressed Julius (despite numerous horrid insinuations to the country, now made by Eamon and Frankie for what Julius assumed were reasons of _Auld Lang Syne_ ), as did waking up _anywhere_ but his own bed in dearest London, within reach of the Thames and a decent chai tea. And, of course, within reach of his _husband_ , not that he -

He swore to himself, as he had for the past fourteen days, that as soon as he could persuade his brother and dear Jane to monetise Woodingdean Hall, he would return to the damp pavements and Fortnums chutney (which _did not_ , despite Jane’s protestations, taste the _same_ when brought by inferior courier). And perhaps even try to sort out his life, beyond this parody of an amicable divorce.

Two weeks ago, Julius’s eyes had filled whenever he reflected that it was his mother’s passing which made the future of Woodingdean, the Nicholsons’ country pile near the South coast, a suddenly precarious issue. Even five days ago, the sharp sickness of remembering every morning that he’d cocked up his marriage just before losing his mother, had nauseated and appalled him.

Now, his only thought was that the conglomeration of genteel follies and baronial atrocities which constituted the Hall (much of it hastily constructed to accommodate itinerant monarchs, in between bouts of plague or arson) must be made to _pay._ Otherwise, probate was going to swallow them all and quite possibly drive Julius to fratricide.

Perhaps waking up worrying about solicitors' fees, as opposed to the fact that the love of his life abhorred him not six months after their devastatingly beautiful wedding, was progress. He'd said as much to Jane only yesterday, but Jane had only looked firm and taken the Jaffa Cakes off him, and then Alexander had come striding in with a slavering canine and reprised his stomping aria about _just call him_ _you're a melodramatic arse_ _squit_ and _I thought divorce put people_ off _their oats_ _oh what Jane you're the one swapping his milk for skimmed_. 

Once, Julius had been vaguely ashamed that, behind his progressive principles and entirely heartfelt beliefs regarding multiculturalism and the redistribution of wealth, there lurked a house whose Gothic excesses and Georgian bravura made him wince. Now he was just determined to see the blasted thing converted into a conference centre before blood and breath left his body.

And if that meant _staying_ in the thing, alongside Alexander and Jane and their innumerable hellhounds, slowly dying of curiosity as to what wreck of misery his ex-husband might or might not be experiencing, he must do it.

He would force Alexander to agree to the tea-room. He would compel Jane to begin research licences for weddings and partnership ceremonies. He himself would contact the local synagogue with reference to bar mitzvahs, or possibly the British Humanist. And then, just as the first hapless innocents arrived for their Jewish-humanist gay palooza, he would take an extremely long walk off Brighton fucking pier.

Julius told himself every day that he was _moving on_ with his life.

His mobile phone had miraculously revived itself, Julius noticed pettishly (until then, “signal” had been on Julius’s spluttered list of “things apparently unobtainable in the benighted countryside”, along with jasmine pearl tea, adequate sushi, little lavender-scented heated bags, manicures for men, Douglas's goodwill, and artisanal matzos), and winced as he spotted the various missed calls.

His current interlocutor was a baffling and presumably hoax enquiry made on behalf of Olly Reeder with regard to away-day rates for teambuilding.

The voicemail was from Sam and it made Julius sit bolt upright in his hand-monogrammed striped pyjamas, swearing so loudly and fluently (albeit entirely without _r_ sounds) that he was audible above the dogs.


	8. Choose Life (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lost my teeth on the edge of a glass  
> And it’s fun while it lasts and it lasts and it lasts
> 
> \--- The Indelicates, "Europe"
> 
> This was geographically inaccurate and a rewriting of history, but Malcolm heard something that came close to a sob.

Malcolm watched Jamie’s eyes drag themselves open. For a second, Malcolm was terrified in case there was no consciousness there, just blank anonymity, but then with the same miraculous trust he’d always shown, Jamie gradually settled his gaze on Malcolm, and something of the hand that had been clutched round Malcolm’s heart for hours relaxed its grasp. The one thing that the little fucker had always been able to do, regardless of nocturnal skulduggery or drug intake or proximity to a pile of his own vomit, was wake with the blissful unconcern of an unbummed choirboy.

Thus, with the air of a man to whom all this had happened before, and all this would happen again, but this time it had happened in a hospital bed but Malc was there so probably things were fine, eh, Jamie looked, groggily but contentedly, across at Malcolm, who in one of the more disgraceful moments of his life, promptly fell off his chair.

People with fucking oxygen tubes shouldn’t _laugh_ at you, Malcolm concluded, leaning half-blind against the wall (and threatening to slide down it, now his legs were so weak) and trying to remember how to breathe himself, while nurses (summoned by the crash, and silently conferring as to whether they should ask the poor old man to take a Valium) removed tubes and assessed the vitals of the blood-caked, wheezy phoenix chuckling up at them from the bed.

When they were alone, Malcolm (who’d manage to return the nurses’ smiles and not drop at their feet) resumed his seat. If he tried to speak, he was going to vomit or worse.

Jamie grinned at him, and nudged his discoloured hand back towards Malcolm’s. Full consciousness had been brief, and Malcolm could see that he was already lapsing back towards a more natural sleep. Malcolm could see the blood where his lips had cracked. Jamie cleared his throat.

“Feel sick,” he croaked, and Malcolm felt a spasm of quite lunatic panic, starting to ask whether he should call the nurses, before Jamie gave him another blissful, opiate grin. “Sight ae you in that fleece, eh.”

It was the first time in two years that he’d heard Jamie’s voice. Longer still since Jamie’d made a joke at his expense. Malcolm heard it with the sort of intestine-weakening joy that made him feel like everything in his body could crack at once.

He ran his thumb very gently over the least bruised part of Jamie’s hand, aware that Jamie was so blissfully drugged he might not notice any pain. He was also aware that he’d started grinning like an idiot. Jamie squinted slightly and tried to turn his head towards the window, and Malcolm heard some Dignitas-addled fool telling him whisht in a tone of tender senility.

After a moment, panic crossed Jamie’s face, and Malcolm leaned forward involuntarily and cupped the top of his head. Considering that what he wanted to fucking do was crawl into the bed, preferably under Jamie’s skin, and ask why the fuck Jamie had attempted a double murder (because the second Jamie’d pissed off to see the Almighty, Malcolm now knew that he too would have died, rotted, fucking asphyxiated on the spot), and considering that at this point Malcolm was tearless, sleepless, and so far past a dozen oscillations of desperate fear and sweat-drenching relief that he was probably medically insane, pressing a few of his fingers two millimetres into the soft dark hair of a man who probably couldn’t feel it anyway seemed like a fucking restrained and respectable substitute.

Jamie blinked at him.

“ – accident? Claire – the weans – “

“They’re fine. It was just you.” Possibly passive morphine intoxication was a real phenomenon: Malcolm found himself watching Jamie’s face like it was the most fascinating fucking thing on earth, and not the drugged and delayed reactions of a midget with black eyes.

He raised an eyebrow, waited until Jamie’d settled again. “Didn’t need any help crashing the car.”

“Aye,” Jamie agreed, inconsequentially. He seemed to be drifting, but Malcolm felt a slight answering pressure against his hand. “S’sunny,” he added, in a tone of wonder, and Malcolm supposed this was what it felt like before your heart ripped itself off its suspension cables and found itself a blunt end of rib to stab itself on. For a moment he couldn’t speak, just nodded and (very gently) stroked through Jamie’s hair.

Jamie didn’t seem to notice; he was peering past Malcolm as if trying to remember. “Aren’t you in prison?”

Malcolm paused. “No, pet.”

This was apparently sufficient. “What day is it?”

“Friday. I was released – “

“ – yesterday,” Jamie managed. He stifled a yawn. “You look like shit,” he added complacently, and Malcolm remembered how to laugh, smoothing his thumb across Jamie’s scalp. “’N you really – came straight here?’ Malcolm held tight to the mattress with his free hand.

“Jamie. Of course I fucking did. We don’t have to do this now, you’re – off your head, sweetheart, you need rest,” his voice was shaking and Jamie, worriedly, was trying to rouse himself out of the fucking sleep which he _needed_ , shit, he was seriously _fucking this up_ , “but I’m so sorry. Of _course_ I came. Should never have gone.”

This was geographically inaccurate and a rewriting of history, but  Malcolm heard Jamie suppress something that came close to a sob, and didn’t need a second invitation when the other man dragged on his arm. He twisted down so he could put his face on the pillow beside Jamie’s, and touched his face. They stayed like that for a while, Malcolm watching sleep swim in and out of Jamie’s eyes, and holding his breath for whatever came next.

“ – how was prison?”

“Shite. You were gone.” The admission sailed out of him, effortless, and Jamie gave him a tired smile. “Sleep.”

“’k you.” Obedience came as a visible relief. “Oh, I’ve been fucking marvellous, by the way, thanks for taking a – “

“All right, jesus, you sound like something from a swamp. How was… how were you?”

“How do you fucking think, you cunt,” Jamie exhaled. “Must ae been a nasty shock, eh.” His eyes were drooping, and Malcolm spent too long watches his eyelashes (ridiculous that _they_ should be all right, when his fucking _eyes_ were black and he was going to be scarred for years down his front) before idly asking for clarification.

“You comin’ straight tae Brighton, wantin’ tae see me, turnin’ up, findin’ out I – I wis like this,” Jamie explained, not without a note of sleepy satisfaction.

The moment to correct the misunderstanding went by, and Malcolm watched as the silence turned into a lie.

It would have been true but for his cowardice. He’d wanted to be there. He _should_ have gone. And the axe would fall when Claire came back.

Sometimes there’s escape through denial, or escape through paralysis, or escape through a carefully-chosen oblivion. And sometimes there’s an escape in simply accepting the consequences, then deciding to bide your time.

“ _Knew_ you’d still – you’d come here,” Jamie told him, eyes shut.

Jamie was alive. And, once again he believed in Malcolm as the man Malcolm wanted to be.

When they were young, he’d believed in that vision despite all evidence to the contrary, despite Malcolm’s da, despite the asthma, despite the marriage, despite the brief and disastrous winter fronting a Glaswegian punk band called _Bananeros_. He’d disagreed with Malcolm privately and thrown punches for him in public. He’d told Malcolm Mary was an ice-arsed bitch who’d leave him for the first sorry cunt who was a sorrier cunt than him. He’d thrown a chair down some stairs at him when Malcolm disagreed, but he’d gone to the wedding and Malcolm hadn’t found out about the aftermath until five years later when, indeed, Mary had left him for an American press hack with an arse for a face.

Now Malcolm knew there was no glamour left to sustain him. He was, as Claire had rightly diagnosed, a tired parasite who’d needed Jamie for sustenance and life-blood. A spectre at the family feast. He of whom no good could come.

Well, fine: it was an improvement on yesterday, he just wanted to be all those things for another couple of hours.

Jamie planted a kiss on Malcolm’s jaw, the closest skin to his own. That was the first time that Jamie had kissed him since before – oh, a hundred years.

Malcolm had never let himself start to diarise it, although it didn’t take a calendar to remind him he’d never truly kissed back.

It occurred to Malcolm that Jamie was on more than enough drugs to forget all of this the next time he woke up. The thought made Malcolm wish to god that he was on drugs too.

At least as far as sleeping pills went, he didn’t need them. He didn’t stay awake very much longer than Jamie.

Miraculously, when he awoke it was to neither medical crisis nor uxorial retribution, just to a nurse taking Jamie’s stats and good-humouredly not euthanizing him when he began, undaunted by bruising, catheter, and bloodied breath, to try and flirt with her. Malcolm continued to feel disablingly weak with relief, despite the hollow in the pit of his stomach. Jamie was slightly more alert but no less content, relaxed against the pillows and making round-eyed, encouraging suggestions about the possibility of breakfast. When Claire arrived, the first thing she heard was their laughter.

 

 

What disconcerted Claire most was that, as the four of them spilled into the room, Malcolm didn’t even move. His eyes flicked up towards her face, and despite now looking tramplike with emaciation and missed sleep, the old flare of authority – which she’d always so hated – was back. His forearm rested above Jamie’s head, on the pillow, and with his mouth he smiled at the girls, smooth and easy. But in the second before they’d seen her, Claire saw the photo superimposed on their faces, their younger selves, together before she’d even sat her O’Grades, and re-read the inscription on the back of the photo in the light of a lie: how Malcolm had told Jamie _yours now_ when what he’d really meant was _you’re mine_.

God, she’d imagined it enough and sometimes she’d thought she’d caught them, long before – coming into a room unexpectedly; arriving five minutes early; losing sight of Jamie at a party and tracing him to the kitchen where they’d be pissing themselves laughing at some cockless windsock from Health or Transport, but with the lines of their bodies making them look like lovers. The way Malcolm stalked about like somebody’d made him emperor of the world, and behind him, zeal-eyed hierophant, was Jamie. Once – a rare night out, and she never allowed it again – Jamie’d babysat, and she’d come home to find Malcolm sipping wine (wine he’d _brought_ , as if she and her husband were _peasants_ ) on her sofa with Jamie asleep beside him. Not an incriminating sleep – he had sick on his t-shirt and was snoring with a mouth like a drainpipe – but Malcolm had looked like a man in possession, courteous though he’d been. Now, with Jamie lying almost in Malcolm’s arms, she was suddenly, horribly able to imagine how they’d be together, and for a giddy moment wondered if Jamie had even crashed the car deliberately, desperate to draw Malcolm back.

She’d promised Malcolm until Jamie recovered. It was a promise she was no longer willing to keep.

Nellie was immediately trying to climb on the bed, the least aerodynamic process possible, and as Malcolm helpfully lifted her up (she grinned at him and then sat on her father’s leg), Claire looked down at that helpful hand and fondly imagined shooting a bullet through it.

Ruth and Maggie had gone straight to their father, examining his scars and stitching with what some ( _some_ not entirely enraptured by whimsical blonde doll-children with the eyes of telekinetic bush-babies, and  instead reminded by the Macdonald girls of psychotic porcelain dolls that came alive in the night and ate your faces) might have called a faintly terrifying interest. Claire, who didn’t want to eat Malcolm’s face but would willingly have stamped on it, held Malcolm’s gaze for another moment, then smiled very sweetly and went across to her husband.

“Hello, love, how are you doing?” Jamie gave her an answering smile that made Malcolm wince a little. He’d forgotten what that was like (in fact, he had the distinct impression he’d worked _hard_ at forgetting _what that was like_ even when it was a near-daily occurrence).

The girls had had their hugs and disposed themselves at the foot of the bed, where Ruth, solemn and petite as a Tenniel engraving, had started reading through Jamie’s medical notes and making emendations in glitter pen. Maggie squeezed Malcolm’s hand as she passed him, and Claire, aware of this as a peripheral laceration, waited until Maggie’s back was turned and communal sniggering had begun (Nellie’d spotted a catheter bag tucked into the plastic holder provided for such an item, and asked WOT DIS in her piercing tones) to lean across Jamie and whisper, _Go_ to Malcolm.

Jamie’s face looked like a child’s drawing of hurt surprise. Malcolm, lips pressed together, looked up at Claire but gave no clues.

“ – pet, _why_? He just wanted to see us.”

“Malcolm, will you go?”

Malcolm sits back in his chair, lips parted, watching her warily.

“Claire, what the – ach, _sweetheart_ , you don’t think - ? Come on, pet, he’s only just out of prison – “ Maggie and Ruth’s heads snap round with interest, and Jamie drops his voice (which is probably futile, Malcolm and Claire think, unknowingly as one). “He came here. He’s had a shock.”

“ _He_ ’ _s_ had a shock? Jamie – I’m not doing this. He’s the reason you’re – “

“He came all this way to see us. He was sorry about how he’d left things – Malc, _tell_ her.”

“What?” Claire stared between them, and Malcolm pressed his lips together, rubbed a hand over his face. “Is that what he’s told you?”

“Malc?”

Malcolm exhaled through his nose. He’d had time but prepared nothing. “Jamie… ah, Aggie, you’ll be wanting a fucking chair,” Saved and muttering, he got up, making way for the spherical reappearance of Claire’s sister, dangling car keys and scowling at him. But then Jamie caught his arm, so tightly it hurt, and the way Malcolm looked down at him, involuntarily, made Claire throw up her hands.

“Girls, will you go with Aggie to the canteen? I need to talk to your da.” She shot a look at Malcolm that invited him to spend that time on the roof, or preferably just off it. Jamie was looking exhausted again, and sort of slow-motion belligerent: Malcolm had seen it a thousand times when he was drunk, but seeing him weak and disoriented was terrible. As was, on reflection, the idea that he was going to have to cross the room and go.

“Claire. He’s no’ well.”

“Seems to be recovering marvellously.”

 “Malc? What’s…” Malcolm jerked his head back, but Claire’s expression stayed stony.

“I’ll be in the corridor. But I’m not going any further than that.”

Malcolm was still in the corridor fifteen minutes later. Before they were spirited away to Brighton’s finest NHS breakfast, Maggie and Ruth had given him mournful, worried looks, and Malcolm rallied with his best guess at a smile. When she reappeared, Claire’s eyes were glittering with rage.

“We’d both like you to leave.”

Malcolm just looked at her.

“I told you what you’d be doing if you stayed here. And you couldn’t even let him recover before you sank your claws in – all over him, when he’s still in _bed_ , he’s still – you’re _disgusting_ , Malcolm. You’d rip the two of us apart, just to recreate – for the power you had before. We’ve got a life here but _you_ , you’re only back here an hour and you could destroy – “

“I wish you’d stop telling me I could destroy your marriage,” Malcolm said. “I might start to believe you.”

He heard Claire’s sharp intake of breath. “I’ve told him you weren’t coming to see us. That you’re only here because Sam and Frankie _brought you_.” His reaction then was a positive pleasure to her. She smiled, an incendiary, triumphal smile, and Malcolm had the feeling he remembered from politics: of everything, from his soles to the roots of his hair being lit t with electrical rage.

“I want to talk to him.”

“Feel free.” She stepped neatly away from the door.

 

 

Jamie was lying flat again, his face turned towards the window. The chair Malcolm had been sitting on, on the far side of the bed, now bore Claire’s handbag, marking it off. With several of the machines cleared, the humming of the monitors was quieter, and although Malcolm could still see Jamie’s chest rising and falling (and the way he was staring at the ceiling) the snowy sheets and the intermittent silence made it feel that much more like a deathbed.

“Jamie.” Malcolm took a step towards the bed. “Jamie?”

“I’m no’ talkin’ tae you.”

Malcolm looked at the ceiling, exhaled (and tried to pretend it was annoyance, not despair or relief). “For Christ’s sake, you talk in your fucking _sleep_.”

The next was quieter: “Fuck you.” A pause. “M’tired.”

“Jamie…”

“Eh, piss off, Malc.” He turned his face. “You were here because they brought you – no, fuck off, I know. I thought you wanted to see us. But y’only came ‘cos you thought you widnae have to face us. And now you’d have Claire take my _bairns_ – “

“Jamie,” Malcolm said, and a less drugged man would have spotted the dangerous edge in his voice, “ _What’s_ she said. _What_ has she said about the bairns. She’s a liar. I’ll cut off her – “

“ – no! That’s just fucking Och, I don’t know, but – “ He had that panicked, confused look again, and Malcolm wanted to throw a chair. “ – but _you thought I was deid_. That’s the only - why you’re here. You sent a fuckin’ email about your keys and you – went – just like before, to London, and I _can’t_ go, I live here.”

“Stop,” Malcolm said, and was unsurprised to hear himself begging. “Jamie. I should have come anyway. I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Yeah, for a few fucking hours! I’ve had years. _Years_. I did everything for you. Even when you fucked – why d’you _think_ that Sureka bint went down when she did? I’d have done _anything_. And – and Claire and I – it’s not any of us that’s the priority, we’re old enough to make – make – “

“Oh, spare me the party political broadcunt,” Malcolm sneered, rage coming back to him as Jamie started to struggle. It was taking all his effort not to put his arms round Jamie or drag that lying bitch of a wife back into the room by her teeth. “I know what Claire’s told you to say. Listen to me, Jamie. I would walk myself under a _fucking bus_ – and I would take Claire with me – before I let her keep you from your kids. _Nobody_ is taking away your bairns, here.”

“You’re _only here_ because you thought I was dead. Now fuck off.”

“So I just go, do I?”  
  
“Stick around if you like, they’ll be changing my pissbag in a bit. If m'lucky it'll spray you."

“If I do go, I’m coming back this evening.”

“No you aren’t.”

“Yes I fucking am, you stupid – “

“Fuck you. I don’t need you hanging around Dr Shipman: the Prostate Years, waiting to get some work experience. I’m fine.”

“Oh aye, that’s why they had to fucking jump-start that swinging bag of fat you call a heart – _jesus_ , Jamie, did they no’ _tell_ you what smoking’s done to your tubes?”

“Oh, that’s fucking rich from you, Kate Moss’s dead shaved vegetarian _cat_ , at least something _gets_ in my tubes from time to time. Your bloody Ethiopia diet – “ He had to break off to _visibly_ catch his breath, but then did a Tazmanian devil impression the minute Malcolm tried reach the bed, “ – hate to break it if that’s what you’re – going – but you’re about five centures too late for a centrefold. Unless it’s fucking _Gravediggers Weekly_ – oh, get lost, I’m _fine_. S’just _bruises_.”

“It’s bleeding on the brain and a fucking cardiac arrest,” Malcolm shot back, and then wondered if he were having either or both. Jamie glared at the ceiling.

“I don’t need you sitting round here with your dick in water because you think you’ve got blood on your hands. I told you I’m _fine_. Go.”

Malcolm did.


	9. Choose Life (Part 3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam really is an excellent PA.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be afraid of your parents  
> Be afraid of their clever friends  
> I’ve read this book before  
> and darlin' i can tell you how it ends  
> be afraid of the line they teach you,  
> be afraid of the way it goes  
> You be amazed at what you can raise  
> to something everybody knows
> 
> \-- The Indelicates, "Be Afraid Of Your Parents".

Malcolm had wanted to tell Claire that, since she was the mother of Jamie’s children, Malcolm would feel himself eternally obligated to give her the last seat on the bus and the spare passport for the finalchopper from Saigon, but since she’d threatened Jamie with the loss of those children, Malcolm wouldn’t be entirely sorry if the chopper chopped off her fucking _heid_ instead.

However, Nellie, Ruth and Maggie had accompanied their mother back from the cafe, the first in disgrace for having bitten her aunt; their presence had presumably curbed his tongue, at least to the extent of Nellie not biting _him_.

When Sam had left in the early hours of the morning (fuck, he really should _pay_ her), she’d mentioned something about a locker in the relatives’ room – and, indeed, there was a key in his coat pocket. Having found his grip bag and the neatly-packaged suit, he suddenly realised that he was shaking. By anyone’s standards he hadn’t had more than coffee and tea since leaving prison.

Sitting in the cafeteria, really forcing himself to face up to cardboard toast and fat spread, Malcolm replayed the last few things Jamie had said to him, in the final diatribe before he’d shut the door and stumbled past Jamie’s family. _You look old. Our Billy looked better after five years in Strangeways and he did fucking crack. Jesus – how did you get like that?_ And _you thought I was fucking deid, you’re the only zombie I can fucking see_ and _no fuck you I’m fine_.

He caught sight of himself in a mirrored panel on the wall, one of those bizarre mixes of frosted and mirrored glass in an embellished design that was meant to make the cafeteria seem non-institutional and cosy, but which you only fucking saw in hospital cafes and airport pubs.

The last time Malcolm’d consciously looked in the mirror, he’d had reddish eyes and an off-white face like something left out to curdle, but he was sure his hair hadn’t been grey. Now he looked like someone’s dead warlock grandfather, dressed in the terminal leisurewear of defeat and chemotherapy.

It was possible that, had Malcolm reached this nadir of exhaustion and jealousy a few hours earlier, the plan that came to him as he picked off the burned bits of crust (and wished he’d just gone for a Fanta and a walnut whip) might have stirred some vestigal stump of shame.

Instead, he found himself focussing more fully on the mirror, snaking a hand through his hair, and assessing the slight growth on his jaw. An onlooker would have seen him start to rummage in the grip bag, producing the iPhone which Sam had so neatly repacked for him.

To escape the regulatory tutting of the canteen staff, he cleared his plate, took his bag and hid behind a large and dusty plant, before starting to trawl his address book.

On the way to Brighton, one of the few topographical details he’d been able to notice clearly was a sign for Woodingdean. The place had been the subject of one of Jamie’s most enduring but least subtle jokes, centring mainly on illustrating departmental literature (and in some cases furniture) with illustrations of enormous phalluses, all more or less anthropomorphised into Julius Nicholson. Scrolling through to N, softly cursing the touchscreen, he faltered. A little block of text had leapt up for one of the _M_ contacts – Peter Mannion. Malcolm squinted down at the little cartoon bubble thing, then admitted defeat and got his glasses.

“Inexplic Dep PM as you know. Marriage on rocks – v close to PM. Slight stink last yr, Embassy Ball, Tina panic attack in loo. Son eco-startup bollocks. Might bolt if not for PM.”

He blinked and clicked on a few more names.

“Messenger, Emma. PM chew toy, bullied in manner 3rd class gym mistress BUT prob why PM still in power - scary dream team. Ice queen. Only srs wobble re: Transport overspend Apr 2013. Gossip says had abortion Dec 2012 but doubt it was Noddy’s.”

“Miller, Dan. More like Liz Taylor every day. Olly constantly hiding/lying. Dyeing hair. Insane. Convinced divine mission to get 90% majority. Gets on well with Fergus’s mad wife.”

Malcolm snorted. God bless Sam, for believing that there was still a point to briefing Malcolm Tucker on the activities of his political rivals.

Another name was not familiar.

“Morrisey, Niamh. New wife of Fergus W. Insane. God-botherer. Totally toxic. Hates Mannion, wants FW either Lib Dem leader or out of politics asap. Reeder scared of her but talks to her tits. Srs liability but former model. You’ll hate her. Pally Dan M - same Messiah complex.”

Pausing, Malcolm considered and resisted the temptation to scroll back up to Macdonald, Jamie.

“Nicholson, Julius. In Lords less now, making family touristify Chateau Bald. Mother died. You sent F&M hamper and Auden MS to his CP – which folded 6 mos ago. Poor D got job – “ Malcolm frowned; something had gone wrong with the screen and now the phone was just showing Julius’s name and – aha.

The great bald cherub was on the line. Malcolm took a moment to silently imitate the shark, then composed his features into one of professional fragility, set his eyes to “genuine” and, in lowered tones, hit the “accept” button and purred.

“Julius.”

“Malcolm. What an absolutely _horrific_ time you’ve been having – I should wish to make it a _matter of record_ that despite the _fluctuations_ in my professional association with James, I was _appalled_ to hear of his accident, and if you were to give me his wife’s address, I should _gladly_ send them a muffin hamper, Malcolm, _gladly_.”

Malcolm pressed two elegant figures to the bridge of his nose and sighed. Julius continued in a similarly portentous vein for some minutes, mingling genuine shock and sympathy with a tubby self-congratulation on having so nobly risen above all the times Jamie force-fed him chow mein or called him cocktoy or stapled his packets of Duchy Originals to his (far more original) William Morris curtains. Malcolm let him finish.

“ – our _new heritage site_ – “ megadome built by slavery, Malcolm supplied mentally, “ – is _only_ twenty minutes from Brighton and – and I was wondering if you would like anywhere to _stay_.” He sounded both benevolent and breathless. “Or, of course, I should be happy to have Hill drive you back to London, but if you _would_ rather be on the spot – we have a very comfortable guest suite – “

Malcolm propped the phone on his shoulder and unzipped the suit bag Sam had provided. Her choice of suit was satisfying. And the label on the still-tagged shirt was expensive enough even for Julius. Malcolm sat back a little and did his best impression of a Persian cat  who’d been too long at the whiskey.

“ – I’m afraid, Julius, I’m going to need you to do rather more than just _feed_ me.” Hopefully, Julius’s knees were buckling. He gave himself another critical glance in the mirror. Asking the human lighthouse to recommend a hairdresser might be going too far. Malcolm turned his attention back to the phone: probably the noise meant that Julius was trying to stammer and orgasm at the same time.

“ – Malcolm – needless to say, I’m flattered that you should ask for _help_ , and – yes?”

Malcolm twisted his head once more. He looked like a fucking cadaver, Jamie was _right_.

“Julius,” Malcolm repeated, unnecessarily but with luxurious pleasure. “I want you to _feed_ me.”

 

And after that, everything was easy. Not one hour later, Malcolm was at the head of a table in actual fucking castle, slightly astonished both by its size, and by the frankly demonic energy which Lord Baldycock had shown in dragging him back to the massive penis-substitute of Woodingdean Tower, or whatever the fuck Chateau Phallus was really called.

Now, all Malcolm had to do was smile and read the papers (useful in itself) while Baron Food Porn scampered hither and thither  (he hadn’t thought Julius could move so fast) somewhere nine thousand doors down, telling the kitchen maids to spitroast the greyhounds and baste the pet peacocks’ bollocks or whatever the _fuck_ Julius was doing in the way of lunch.

Julius, meanwhile, was in a state of protracted, precise bliss. Between orgiastic ecstasies of spoon-licking and taste-testing (and occasional spinsterish fits of shrieking when his sister-in-law’s larder contained neither kosher salt nor duck eggs), he found himself almost _trembling_ with self-congratulation. Even when Malcolm was at his most diabolical, Julius had fantasised about the judicious mix of _care_ and _control_ that might achieve the crucial outcome of simultaneous cooperation with policy implementation _and_ Julius being allowed to chain Malcolm to his bed.

He had known it was never to be, of course: Malcolm was incapable of embracing the new dialectics of political evidence-based strategisation, and also James Macdonald would kill anyone who tried anything. And then, of course, Julius had found Douglas – well, not found, they’d known each other all their lives – and for a brief season, nobody else had existed. But best for both Julius and the reader not to reflect on that too deeply.

(They'd last met at Livia Nicholson’s private cremation – family only, St Martin’s-in-the-Fields some weeks hence. When Julius saw Douglas’s sleek Aston Martin snaking up the drive, he’d wanted to ask how dare Douglas still consider himself family and also to beg him to come home. He’d stayed a little less than an hour. He’d only really spoken to Alexander. And even that, apparently, had been simple social chat while Julius was ferrying elderly aunts to their cars. Julius had always supposed that only the most cowardly men let their lovers walk away like that).

Julius, apart from one dazzling day at Chequers when Jamie had strolled about (with his frightening children) in a dazzlingly white shirt and jeans that made him look like Joe Orton’s less conservative brother, had never understood the appeal (he’d break your _furniture_ ) of young James. But he’d had respected James’s firearm-style possessiveness. It was how he’d felt about his own husband, notwithstanding the probability that _his_ revenge would have involved toxins in a carbonated beverage, rather than brute force and gaffer tape.  Not that gaffer tape would have necessarily made Douglas happier to stay with him. He preferred _abroad_.

Meanwhile, although he would no more have dared approach Jamie than step between a Rottweiler and its owner, he did privately condemn Malcolm’s young compatriot for never directing any of his considerable energy towards seeing that Malcolm ate a decent meal (Jamie, of course, would have angrily refuted this, but it depended on one’s definition of _decent_ ).

And now Julius’s husband was gone, and he was making lunch for Malcolm Tucker in the kitchen of his dead mother – or rather, his dead mother’s staff. Momentarily, the thought blurred Julius’s eyes; but he spoke strictly to himself and rallied.

Then, more indulgently, he remembered that in the same second that Malcolm had soften his eyes and murmured _I’m awfully sorry about your marriage, Jul’us_ , he’d rested his delicate hand on Julius’s and said he was afraid he’d have to trouble Julius for the use of a hot bath. Julius had immediately lapsed into a brief fantasy of washing Malcolm’s hair and/or discovering just how whip-thin Malcolm was without his clothes, and then cosseting him back to health via nourishing, rich dinners.

Lunch was, Malcolm conceded, exquisite. Either Julius were preternaturally blessed or he’d observed Malcolm’s rare but specific preferences in wine, _and_ the fragrance of the soup was devastating even before one got to the taste and texture of visibly swirling cream. The chicken, which followed, willingly collapsed in his mouth, and the sauce was obscene.

Malcolm found himself buttering his bread like some Blyton-starved orphan, and finishing every scrap. Julius was delighted to find Malcolm so interested in his latest pre-election strategies and value-added assessments for the new Educational Diversity Monitoring Unit; all of which Julius was careful to fully contextualise, mindful (and inwardly compassionate) that Malcolm had been out of the loop for so long. He never guessed that Malcolm was grinding his teeth and trying not to kill him for his slowness in providing reliable gossip.

And then, he was lying in a vast Victorian fantasy of a bathtub, with the water gleaming with oils and unguents, and a vast bottle of what was obviously women’s shampoo and conditioner on the side. Malcolm assumed this must belong to the sister-in-law, a woman he’d heard but not seen, on the basis that Alexander Nicholson was so like his younger brother that Malcolm assumed his parents had made them both from a kit (and then stuck a waxed jacket and five hundred dogs on “Xander”, vs. rimless specs and a speech impediment on their younger son).

Deeply suspicious of conditioner, Malcolm nevertheless applied it, and the results frankly made Julius want to weep. Having scrubbed the last of prison from his skin, and then scraped a day’s growth from his chin, Malcolm brushed, flossed, clipped and trimmed himself back to sharpness. “I’m afraid I don’t have a decent dressing-gown, Jul’us – “ this was _also_ a lie, but an eminently successful one. Decorum permitted Julius only a brief glimpse of an arm reaching through the doorway, but then Malcolm Tucker was strolling about wearing his clothes.

Malcolm found a plate of artery-hardening biscuits and a cup of tea beside the guest bed, which was so soft and billowing it was a little like falling asleep between the breasts of Sophia Loren. This, and the astonishing idea that someone had sprinkled _lavender_ on his sheets, were Malcolm’s last conscious thoughts before three hours of dreamless sleep overtook him.

He woke to the sound of Julius’s sister-in-law playing piano three hundred doors down, or wherever the fuck she was, and was surprised to find himself feeling both totally refreshed, and hungry. He ate the rest of his biscuits like a Dickensian waif at Christmas, and didn’t even have to hack up a lung (Malcolm’s normal reintroduction to life, post-sleep) beforehand.

 He dressed in his shirt (ironed some good fairy/underpaid Slovakian maidservant/jesus surely not Julius’s sister-in-law fuck that was uncomfortable _fuck_ ) and suit and then, which wasn’t kind but gave Malcolm another flare of flirtatious self-confidence, of exactly the sort he needed proffered his wrists and asked Julius to lend him some cufflinks.

This backfired slightly when a totally dumbfounded Julius led Malcolm into his room (via the door, but Julius’s distraction suggested he could have walked through a wall without noticing), and the vast black-and-white studio portrait of Julius’s ex-husband, propped against a nightbag as if Julius had _brought it with him_ made Malcolm feel so sick with compassion (and shame, because he couldn’t even remember what he’d done with his one picture of Jamie) that he almost forgot to exploit Julius’s longstanding attraction to him in terms of getting Julius to drive him back to the hospital.

The cufflinks moment was not without one further surprise for Julius. His own fingers were twitching unhelpfully whenever he tried to fasten the cufflinks, and he’d stupidly selected a heavy pair on the basis they matched Malcolm’s eyes. Whilst hoping he wouldn’t have to _explain_ this, he fumbled the fastening and – on impatient reflex – grabbed Malcolm’s wrist to steady it. Instantly, the fingers splayed then grew pliant. And Julius heard Malcolm’s little intake of breath. The room suddenly dipped into silence, and Julius’s head was only really clear again as he drove drown Woodingdean Lane, with Malcolm as his passenger, and Radio 4 broadcasting yet another afternoon play in which white people pretended to be muezzins.

Malcolm thanked Julius comprehensively, promised to be home soon, and so debauched the hitherto innocent dipthong on _home_ that Julius drove home in a state of shaky, yet grieved exhilaration (and then remembered Douglas, and sighed, and wanted to drown himself).

Then, Malcolm crossed the hospital carpark, and stationed himself for a fifteen-minute wait. Xander had allowed him into his study to use the broadband, and Malcolm had spent a cynophobic few minutes uneasily evading Tosca and ascertaining visiting hours.

Shortly after five, Claire, Maggie, Ruth and Nellie emerged and headed for the car. The sight of Jamie’s daughters hurt his heart. The sight of the bitch who’d threatened Jamie with their loss made Malcolm want to call back Julius’s sensible Lexus and rev it straight across Claire’s head.

Malcolm waited until the Macdonald women were safely out of the carpark, straightened his cuffs, sent up a silent prayer to the god of Paul Smith and Armani and Samantha, and strolled back towards the neurology ward.


	10. I'll meet you at the border in the morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Negotiations can happen at many times and in any many places. Dan Miller takes the evening off. Fergus Williams has a plan (or rather, his wife does), and his Special Advisor isn't happy about it. The PM won't call an election, but she will call on an old friend. Julius Nicholson's ex-husband isn't at all grateful for the advice, and Jamie Macdonald doesn't trust Malcolm Tucker. Really. So stop it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will meet you at the border in the morning  
> The country I was born in it created me compelled  
> But all reason is retrospective love, I just rebel  
> Hang heaven we can build a better war for us in Hell
> 
> \-- The Indelicates, "Sympathy for the Devil".

Jamie gave a very spirited rendition of a sulky twat who yielded no fucks at the sight of a suited, sharpened Malcolm in impeccable tailoring. The sheer intensity of his bored indifference was the first sparkling sign that Malcolm had won.

The problem, though, was that in the second _before_ seeing Malcolm, Jamie looked bedraggled, and blank, and somehow _old_ , alone in his little room with some incomprehensible Channel 4 shit on a portable TV.

The abrupt transition from pathetic inertia to furious indifference was split by a millisecond where the yearning relief on Jamie’s technicolour horror of a face made Malcolm feel less like a winner and more like an emaciated old ex-convict who wanted to bury his face in Jamie’s hair and ask what the fuck he should do. And _apologise_ , but those were all Claire’s weapons and he didn’t have the fucking prerogative.

Of course, Jamie stuck to his plan of not talking to Malcolm beyond basic grunts and occasional reminders that he was fine and _not ill_ and don’t touch his _fucking charts_ , it’s not like you can fucking see, _arseholes_ don’t come with _eyes_. He stuck to it for what seemed like hours.

Confusingly, while his mind was dancing with anger at Malcolm’s audacity and skin-peeling curiosity as to _where_ Malcolm had been, his body just seemed to want to sleep.

“Tired?” Malcolm asked lightly, without properly shifting his eyes from the pisspoor twattery of wee traveller lassies in their big dresses with their stupid boyfriends (but Christ, one of the beefy fuckers looked like Jamie’s brother Caillen, the only one of eight Macdonalds to reach a decent height). Jamie scowled, droopy-eyed and slackening his grip on the remote.

“ – you’re so fuckin’ boring, eh,” he managed, and shoved his heavy head to the left. He wished it was more _policy_ than simple exhaustion. Malcolm couldn’t have spiked the fucking _air_ in the room,  _surely_. 

When Jamie’s mouth was ajar and he was snoring with a noise like Malcolm’s first car, Malcolm reached across and took the remote from his hand. The bruises there were more yellow than purple, an improvement on yesterday.

On News 24, the PM was explaining patiently and plausibly why it would be better for the government to complete the term, rather than call an early election. Malcolm scanned the heads behind her, sneering automatically. Then he slumped back in his chair, loosened his tie, and found (in his jacket pocket) the glasses which Jamie had never seen him wear. With a hand jammed in each armpit, Malcolm Tucker watched as much of the television as was audible over Jamie’s snores, less pleased than one might have expected when his sleep grew quiet and still.

 

 

It was Adam Kenyon’s worst evening since Fergus’s wedding; appropriately enough, it was Fergus and Niamh’s first anniversary party. 

Niamh was dressed entirely in scarlet, which Adam found subconsciously but intensely embarrassing; before the wedding she’d dressed in white, far too much of the time.

They’d got married in a modern, happy-clappy church with all its fittings ripped out in exchange for Alpha courses. The shining ones – Niamh’s friends, all perennial fucking grinners, in case momentary muscle relaxation made you doubt the great work Daddy God was doing in their worthless lives – had done extended extempore hipster praying over the couple, mostly while wearing jeans (which made Adam feel defensive about his suit, but it was a wedding, you were a _fucking suit_ , and then he just felt middle-aged). Adam had stared across at Fergus’s bowed head, where the back of his skull had started balding, and thought “I am embarrassed for you”, because that was a good substitute for everything else he was feeling.

The wedding reception, in deference to Niamh’s principles, was booze-limited, and despite Adam’s extended search, he could genuinely find no cocaine in the toilets.

Fergus had only done coke about once: a total disaster. Later that same student evening, he’d tried ecstasy, then climbed all over Adam’s lap and tried to kiss him. But he’d also tried to kiss a lamppost and the microwave. It had been like a cross between a small golden retriever and some sort of slithering reptile; Adam didn’t like it; he wasn’t sentimental. But Adam had wondered what would have happened if he’d raised his hand and said everybody, Fergus the married man was an occasional drug-taker and once when he was drunk he talked about liking things up his arse – well, he’d have lost his job for fucking one, and it had been a wedding, and Fergus’s parents were nice people who’d paid for a lot of it, so he’d just kept drinking his beer. And wondering what the hell Niamh’s friends were doing, because it wasn’t _dancing_ , and also thinking three and a half weeks was unnecessarily long for a honeymoon.

One year in, Adam still wondered what would happen if he clinked his glass and raised his hand, this time to say that, everyone, Fergus the married man had clearly had his drink spiked three hundred and sixty-five days ago, because Niamh was a lizard under her tits. Clothes.

A fucking pro-Labour lizard, to make things worse. She and Dan Miller came from the same crazy-pod. He was there, which Adam found incredibly stupid.

What did they _do_? What did married people do?  Ending up like Phil would be fucking dreadful – although unlikely, given that Phil looked like someone’s dead dad even at 33 – but Adam’s mind saw white when he tried to imagine what _happened_ when Fergus and Niamh were alone.

Perhaps she just screamed like a fucking banshee (much as Adam would have done, if alone with her) or showed Fergus flashcards with words like “leader”, “baby” and “stop letting Adam come round, he’s an obstacle in my monomaniac fundie quest to make you either PM or Dan Miller’s fluffer, because I am creepily unable to distinguish between the two”. When Fergus was made (masterly use of the passive, there, because Adam credited himself with every second of the victory) Deputy Leader, Niamh had, unforgivably, attributed it to Jesus.

Dan Miller was doing that evil slime-like glide that passed for a walk, with the Prozac Mountain grimace that meant he thought he was being presidential.  The polls didn’t warrant it; the parties were all currently equally hated, with a slight swing towards Bloody Mary on the part of reactionary fuckwits who’d never got over Nanny, a slight swing towards Labour on the part of mad optimists who were prepared to trade progress for a leader with the patience of a despotic starlet. There was a significantly smaller swing towards Fergus’s party on the part of incredibly tired people who were either forgiving, downtrodden, or Quakers.

Niamh hadn’t invited Graeme, which was almost as good a way to ram home the point that Fergus and the Leader hated each other as inviting fucking Miller had been. Adam longed to go across and make the point, but Mrs. Williams was clamped to her husband’s side, laughing slightly-down-and-across at him - thank fuck Adam’d managed to stop her wearing heels – while Fergus rabbited on at Dan in the bright-eyed way which, honestly, had made Adam wonder whether Niamh was drugging him.

Despite efforts, Dan’s gaze kept falling away from Fergus to Niamh’s considerable bust, covered by a large shiny crucifix and precious little else. Having tried to kick against the distant religious leanings of his own parents, Adam was horrified to find himself wincing slightly at the sight of a cross dangling between her breasts, her dress being slashed almost to the navel. Unasked and slightly drunk, his brain supplied the astonishingly terrible thought: _give him Mary Drake_ , _any day_.

After years of slightly sleazy journalism and extremely focused Special Advising, Adam was adept at reading lips in general and Adam’s in particular. Besides, Niamh was bobbing about (Dan’s eyes were on stalks, fucking hell) excitedly. That meant one thing, even before he read it on Fergus’s spoilt lips.

_Coalition._

Pointless, because the PM had said there wouldn’t be an election. Toxic, after the Goolding Inquiry. The public’s short memories had to be about to get considerably longer, now that mad old wolf Tucker was back prowling the streets.

Pissed off, Adam slugged back the last of his beer and headed over. Fergus wouldn’t ask for him while the white witch was breathing venom and sex everywhere. But he’d need him, all the same.

 

“Thank you for coming, despite your misgivings.”

“Thank you for a very pleasant evening.”

“You sound surprised. You’re forgetting that I’m as good as PR as any of you. Please remember how inconvenient it would be to have a senior diplomat die in the small dining room. And your advice is worth more to me than your vote, Douglas.”

“I’d rather you said ‘your friendship’, Prime Minister.”

Mary Drake rolled her eyes, very slightly. “Stop. You’ve given me enough demands already – _no_ , Douglas, I am not going to tell Julius.” William did, of course, demand the entirety of her maternal sympathies when it came to masculine idiocy, but she had some patience left for Douglas. Even now he’d stopped preternaturally refusing to age, the low light in the study made him look like a rather small boy. She rose, and he immediately followed.

“I’d rather you told him about _Moscow_ , than that.”

She smiled. “I shan’t tell him, nor shall I ask forgiveness for what I’m about to say. I’m sorry that my predecessor offered you Harare. I offered you Washington, which you’d made clear you wanted. When Julius refused to go, you left him. He is now in Woodingdean, you have talked at length about the divorce, lost a stone, and done something hateful to your hair, and yet here you are, haunting Mayfair like a bad smell. If you’re free, I wish you’d take the job - unless that's a yes, Douglas, please don't speak.”

Douglas twitched his cufflinks.

“I’ll have to offer it elsewhere, you know. I’ve been in touch with your old employer.”

“Ours.”

“Not for the purposes of history. I want eyes and ears in Washington.” He stared unhappily at the table. Mary sighed. “For goodness’ sake, Douglas, call him.”

“Aren’t you too important to be worrying about the love life of a peer and a diplomat?”

“I believe my Victorian predecessors did little else. But yes, much: that’s why it irks me.” A bell rang. “That's your car.”

“If you’ll truly take my advice,” Douglas murmured, as they descended the staircase, “You’ll call an election.”

Mary paused to straighten Winston Churchill’s frame. “You’re a rehomed spy, old love. Not a politician.”

“And you’re a stubborn horse.”

“I certainly kick. Has Julius heard from Malcolm Tucker?”

“I have no idea. We – after his brother warned me off at poor Livia’s funeral – I have no idea.”

“A good reason to call, perhaps.”

They paused in the entrance hall, Douglas looking tired but exasperated. “I’ve always hated this – it’s like a Masonic Lodge. Oh, well. Thank you for a lovely supper, Mary.”

For a moment, she relaxed, swallowing a yawn. “You didn’t mind not being in the flat? Will’s revision – I think he’s used every cup in the place. It’s fetid. And Georgia’s no better.”

Douglas bowed, courteously. “I enjoyed myself. Tell Will that if he still needs help with his Russian – “

“It’s noted.” As he kissed her cheek, a staff member opened the door beside the grandfather clock. “Prime Minister? The Deputy Prime Minister.”

“I’ll take it in my study, Una, thank you.”

He’d started at the announcement, but Mary looked totally calm. “Is there a problem?”

“Oh, I seriously doubt it.”

To her amusement, Douglas frowned past her, eyes (he did so need glasses) straining after Una’s departing form. “Does Peter Mannion _usually_ ring you at this time of night?”

 

 

Jamie was the one with stitches and a heart monitor. Malcolm was the one grey-faced and wheezing when Jamie appeared to be sleeping too deeply. When a combination of Malcolm’s terrifyingly terrified stare and light shaking roused him, Jamie was sufficiently drowsy to spend several moments growsing and yawning before he got to the jesus don’t _look_ like that stage. As memories reassembled themselves, he rallied and stared suspiciously at Malcolm.

“You were holding my hand.”

“I fucking wasn’t.” Malcolm’s eyes were fixed on Fiona Bruce. Jamie stretched his foot and tried to kick him, succeeding only in knocking his medical notes to the floor.

“You were.”

“You’re off your face.”

A sullen silence. “Yeah, well, you dinnae need to hold it. M’fine – fuck _you_ , stop your mumbling, you auld cock – “

“ – doin’ your best fuckin’ impression of a dead marble elegy, albeit one where the sculptor’s unaccountably decided to immortalise a dwarf who couldnae see over his steering wheel – “

“ – yeah well, Armani called, they want their gay undertaker range back.”

They realised they were both smiling. Allowing for the hour, the years of searing betrayal and badly-churned disappointment, not to mention Jamie’s disfigurement and the bag of his piss hooked up to the bed, it was a heart-warming moment.

And quite literally momentary: just as Malcolm was starting to feel that tailoring and vigilance had been worthwhile, something spilt and darkened in Jamie’s expression.

“M’fine,” he snapped. “Watch your fucking soaps.”

 

 

“Jesus,” said Malcolm, raking claws through his hair. “He’s sinking faster than the fuckin’ Titanic.”

“I’m no’ interested in the polls.”

“No, Jamie, look. More diving than Celtic.”

With many vivid illustrations of reluctance, Jamie turned his head the necessary five inches towards the television. Every time Malcolm said his name, someone tugged a fish hook through his better judgment. That, and the screen, made him angry. “Dinnae start on me. You _chose_ the bastard.”

Malcolm sighed. “There weren’t any fuckin’ choices.”

“It’s nothing but fucking choices. This, all of it. I chose the fuckin’ first day I met you.”

There was a silence. A silence while trucks crashed into skyscrapers and planes fell on burning buildings and an embarrassment of rainforests were eaten by whales on fire. Thunder rolled. Graves slid back their lids and produced a mass of roaring devils. Jamie’s heart monitor went beep beep beep and if Malcolm was surprised to hear it speed up, Jamie was astonished that Malcolm was sufficiently sanguinated to flush up the edge of his neck and jaw.

“M’going back to sleep,” he glowered, and huffed his way down the bed. 

 

 

 

“Jamie – _Jamie_ , pet. Stop it. You’re having a nightmare, the fuckin’ tubes are getting tangled – _Jamie_. It’s a nightmare.”

“ – aye,” Jamie choked. “I fucked the car and you’re dressed like a tailor’s bumboy, oh _god_.” Gulps of air gave way to seriously more ominous gulps, and he waved one badly-taped hand towards the end of the bed. Malcolm shoved a cardboard bowl under his head just in time; Jamie felt cold, familiar fingers on the back of his neck while he heaved. Malcolm (Christ, the auld fuck had never looked after kids, had he? Jamie actually felt _competent_ in comparison) was stroking, shakily. Between rattling coughs, he could hear Malcolm calling him _pet_. He couldn’t choose between the urge to cry and the urge to throw up in his face.

“S’the drugs,” he coughed out, somehow obliged to reassure. “Did it all day. When Claire was here – _fuck_ ,” he winced, and spat noxiously. His throat felt like they’d forced the tubes down it, all over again. “S’ – get rid of it.” Determined to cope, Malcolm took the bowl and left the room wordlessly, but returned _with the ward sister_ , who gave it as her professional opinion that it was indeed, the drugs, and _had_ Mr Macdonald made it clear that visiting hours ended at five?  

Jamie’s impression of a tubercular bush-baby won that one (plus, which Jamie never knew about, fifty fine paper pounds). Jamie was forced to imbibe half a pint of lemon barley water, then lay back on the pillows like an exhausted child.

“What’re we watching?” he asked Malcolm tiredly, but Malcolm had stopped looking at the television, and was instead staring at the wall as if his da, a ghost, and a vast roast dinner were all trooping through it at once. “Malc?”

 He had all the words in all the Anglophone sky that he might have plucked down and refashioned into a conversational constellation. He’d lied on two continents and in a dozen different countries. It was consequently a failure to hear himself croak, “I thought you were dying.”

Jamie stared, then reached for him. “…you think I’d leave the weans?” He saw the auld fucker’s eyes turn _wary_ , then, flickering towards the door as if he’d conveniently just _remembered_ that Jamie was married. Accordingly, Jamie swore, and dragged Malcolm’s hand back into his. “I’m _fine_. I was doing this all fucking day.” When he realised Malcolm was looking down at their interlinked hands as if Jamie’s were covered in shit, he scowled and tried to release his own. Malcolm’s bony fingers grabbed his like a Hallowe’en toy. “What?” Jamie asked, without looking up, and then Malcolm said his name.

It was when Jamie realised that Malcolm was about to kiss him, that he knew the world had gone mad. And then he realised he’d stopped Malcolm (with a splayed hand on his chest) not because of his _wife_ , who’d made it eminently fucking clear what the consequences would be, who’d apparently _orchestrated_ their entire life so that Malcolm would never come and blow them up like a Molotov cocktail, but because some part of demented vanity that he didn’t know he had, that he’d dragged through dismissal and betrayal and every absent erosion of his self-respect, was determined that the first time _Malcolm_ kissed _him_ , he wouldn’t be stinking of sick and pissing into a bag.

Malcolm drew back, and sank into the chair with the same blank stare on his face; except this time he remembered to turn his face towards the television set. Jamie took a moment to register that the malnourished jizzbag genuinely thought himself unwanted. He’d have liked to tell Malcolm that the sun rose and set with the twitching of his geriatric skullbag, but he was tired, _again_.

 

 

 

“Jesus Christ.”

“You’re still here? Och, fuck, _politics_ , you woke me up for this? Jesus – _Malc_.” Jamie yawned and scratched his chin. “Christ, they’ll be arresting me for Lockerbie if I don’t get a shave. Fuck, change the _channel_.” For some reason, deadnight graveclock was the hour at which the BBC had decided to re-run the kind of package that might have been dreamt up in the House of Tucker’s personal Room 101. A filmed guide to the recent and escalating PR incompetencies of the current Opposition.

Jamie rubbed his eyes. He’d done cold turkey on most rolling news in a bid to convince Claire he was cured – and, besides, if he took a hit while “working from home”, she invariably came home to broken glass and a kippered living room. When he saw wormholes, dispatches and criminal stupidity by an elected representative of the people, even just in pixellated form, the sensation reminded him of that time he’d blown Douglas Lundy right after doing a line of coke.

“Would you believe this?”

“I don’t fucking care. S’sleep.”

He shut both his eyes, then opened one three seconds later. Malcolm was keeping up a low litany of obscure but _specific_ disgust, the occasional twitch and convulsion of his hands suggesting that the shambles he caused him actual physical pain. 

Jamie propped himself up to watch.

In profile, Malcolm was increasingly beginning to resemble one of those wee stone skulls you put at the bottom of your kids’ goldfish bowl, along with a pirate ship, for the fish to play with. At the thought of Ruth’s silvery, electric-blue slivers of fishhood swimming in and out of Malcolm’s eye sockets, Jamie shuddered. He watched Malcolm all the more closely, observing time’s inroads into the jawline midway between chin and ear; how his hair was falling into a colour beyond grey, and how he didn’t really

have flesh in his cheeks any more. His ears were doing that weird old man thing, and – and the aftershave splashed on the colourless skin above his collar was _wrong_ , familiar but unplaceable. He looked fucking exhausted, and he’d forgotten to remove the glasses whose existence Jamie’d suspected since he registered the pink indentation (astonishing to see Malcolm the same colour as a fucking animal product) either side of the cadaverous nose.

The glasses made him look like a cunty hipster bastard diguised as a war film fascist but Jamie’d been tracing the minutiae of Malc’s jumped-up flash and flashery since the earliest 1980s, and the war correspondent in his demented soul was avaricious for new material. Malcolm sighed, and swore, and gestured at the screen in that way that was both freakishly feminine and made him look like he had too many fingers. For the first lucid time since the accident, Jamie wanted to throw himself across the bed and rip the rumpled shirt off his skin. And then throttle Malcolm, for daring to once look so defeated.

Malcolm didn’t notice Jamie’s suddenly heavy breathing (to be fair, it was inaudible compared to his own asthmatic wheeze). Olly Reeder was on the screen, as amoebic and virginal as ever. Presumably the jpeg in the attic had a plane’s worth of snakes crawling out of each fucking orifice, by now. The acid in his throat made Malcolm wonder if he was going to vomit. He started to complain.

“Fuck Olly,” said Jamie, sounding rapt and decisive. “We can _kill_ Olly.”

And that was it. That word, one pronoun, two letters, and for the first time in his life it was Malcolm turning back to Jamie with the his-master’s-voice acquiescence of a pleased, if vulpine hound. If the concession – as automatic as a heartbeat, and scarcely more in his control – embarrassed Jamie – he didn’t withdraw it.

Malcolm let Olly Reeder go on spinning. He turned so his forearms were resting on the bed. His eyes were softening to what others might have called his professional look, because they were unable to tell the difference.

“What was your nightmare?”

Jamie lay back again “Same old. Cold. Fuck all in the fridge. But the girls are there now. There’s a monster, and he’s gaining on us.” He shrugged, exhaled. “And we’re all still looking.”

“What for?”

Jamie nodded past him, towards the screen. “She reminds me a bit of my nan.” Frowning, Malcolm turned in disbelief, avid to know what place a one-legged Glaswegian martinet had in contemporary British politics, and was aghast to see Mary Drake making a speech.

“Her?”

“Why not?”

“She’s not got green teeth? Or a fuckin’ _wig_? No voodo doll Prots in her pinny?”

“Prot yoursel,” Jamie said, sounding cheery and oddly _appreciative_.  He nodded at Mary. “For a mad right-wing bitch, she’s no’ so bad. She’d have your balls,” he added, by way of illustrative explanation. Malcolm conceded this, and they watched in companionable silence – punctuated by the odd small scatological joke – as the camera panned round the fat heads of the Cabinet. When the lens lighted on Mannion, Jamie pricked up his ears slightly, then nudged Malcolm. “Wants to fuck her,” he explained, gnomically.

Malcolm stared at him as if he’d just showed him a vast collection of ringpulls, or Cher dolls, or bodystockings made out of tinfoil, but some long-withered instinct made him file the idea away.

A nurse paused outside Jamie’s window, and Malcolm caught her eye through the blinds. Jamie sighed. “You’ll come back in the morning? The girls – s’Saturday, they’ll all be swimming.”

“Aye – jesus, Jamie, _what_?”

“ – not if you think m’fuckin’ _deid_ , though. Or for just the fuckin’ _politics_. _”_

“I _said_ I was sorry. All right, you were off your face, I’ll say it again, just – oh, _fuck_ – “

In an effort to convey his displeasure through the medium of bed-bound interpretative dance (for that was the only explanation), Jamie’s Tazmanian devil waltz had ripped a cannula from the back of his hand. Malcolm had never been brilliant with blood, but managed to rally while this was dealt with.

Some minutes later, with a slightly paler Jamie thoroughly admonished and re-attached to his various means of recovery, Malcolm found himself kissing that hand with a tenderness he’d never managed to muster. “Just get better,” he told Jamie’s skin, close to his pulse. “Then I’ll say anythin’ you fucking like. And shut up,” he added, averting his eyes from Jamie’s dancing ones. Jamie pressed his lips together with deep, exaggerated, obedience, and Malcolm, because it was that or total insanity and all the nurses’ good work undone, almost ran from the room.

 

 

 

Thanks to a delayed, inexperienced taxi driver, and Malcolm’s unrepentantly poor knowledge of south-west topography, it took a full fucking hour to find Woodingdean again. With the exception of prison, he had lived in anything larger than the sterile cashbox he and his own Mary had fashioned (with the help of the Conran Shop, the White Company, and an eau-de-nil homosexual with more umlauts than name). The spiralling follies of the Tower looked jagged and unwelcoming against the night sky. He felt suddenly sure that there was an oubliette somewhere around the foundations; more his destiny than the keys which Julius had given him, and with which he now unlocked the door.

The heaviness with which the door shut, despite his best efforts at muffling, was prison-like, and he cringed. The warm gloom of the hall was disorienting, but all else was still. Evidently the Nicholsons had gone back to their batcaves. As he prepared to do the same, a telephone on one of the fragile little tables began to ring. Malcolm looked at it warily; it cut out after a few moments, as if on command. But then, it began to ring again, and this time the ringing was not nearly so abbreviated.

And then the thought: Sam might know where he was, and if she did, she’d know to call – _fuck_ the country, who _knew_ if there were any signal, Jamie’d been _fine_ when he left but –

“Hello? Who’s this?” Silence. “Is this the – “ he stopped. It had just occurred to him that, rather than a doctor, this might well be a journalist. Deliberately, he hung up, and then redialled the hospital. The night nurse was pleased to tell Aidan Macdonald that Jamie was sleeping peacefully, and certainly didn’t have access to a phone.

Malcolm replaced the receiver, and wondered where Chateau Baldington kept its booze.

And, in an extremely tasteful but decidedly faceless room above his club, Douglas Lundy swore and threw his phone at the wall.


	11. It's been a charming party with marvellous guests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm makes some night-time disclosures; a party gets gate-crashed; Dan Miller thinks it's time to take a step back. Adam Kenyon reconnects with some old friends, and Fergus has a crisis. 
> 
> Olly Reeder's courting the new Secretary of State for Health, and Jamie's daughter's googling the Cabinet. 
> 
> Eachan and Frankie show their loyalty, and after Peter Mannion loses his geographical grip on the anniversary of a bus crash which killed six schoolchildren, Sam ensures that Malcolm stays very much in the loop. 
> 
> This is a kindness which Malcolm, after some .jpegs and a chat with his PA, decides to pay forward, to Julius (who is being plagued by some very questionable dreams).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a marvellous party with marvellous guests  
> We been discussing the decline of the decadent west  
> Over nibbles and wine we are disarmed and impressed  
> by the charming men in uniform  
> It’s been a wonderful evening we’ve exchanged our views  
> How the zionists doesn’t mean the jews  
> At no single step did we feel confused  
> By the charming men in uniform
> 
> \-- The Indelicates, "Be Afraid Of Your Parents".

Having identified the one Chateau Bald sofa that didn’t swallow you up to your knees, and poured himself the first whiskey he could find, Malcolm settled himself in the gloom of the drawing room. Just as the comforting scourge had started to burn its way down Malcolm's mistreated and overstretched throat, a light flicked on in the hall, and a woman came in.

Julius Nicholson’s sister-in-law saw a jumble of bones, semi-divested of tie, but still suited, hastily rearrange itself into a standing position.

“I do beg your pardon,” she smiled. On hearing the voice (posh, but still functional), Malcolm was relieved to find he wasn’t actually facing a soft-focus version of Princess Anne.

Clad in dressing gown and pyjamas, Jane padded across and spotted the decanter. “I thought it was Jasper – our boy, you know. Gap year. What an excellent idea, might I top you up?”

Malcolm shook his head. “Julius I was welcome to – “ he croaked.

“My dear chap, of course. I don’t suppose it _was_ Jasper?”

The brat, Malcolm supposed. There were photographs all over the sideboards - pink-cheeked, wholesome-looking cunt with receding hair. Noticeably a Nicholson, but from the wild, not bred in captivity. “They didnae say who they were. Just silence.”

“Ah. Well, knowing Jasper, there would have been howls for a Western Union transfer. I don’t suppose it was Douglas,” she suggested suddenly. “Oh, _do_ see – call 1471?”

Malcolm looked sheepish. “I – eh. I was slightly concerned it might have been my friend in the, ah, hospital, so I dialled them and – I’m afraid it took ringback.”

“Oh, damn.” Jane sat back in the opposite armchair.

Malcolm noted enviously that she managed to do this in such a way that her knees didn’t hit her chin. “I did so hope – Alexander’s wildly against the whole thing, but it’s obvious to me that the _best_ and _only_ course is for Julius and Douglas to come together again. But listen to me, prattling on about family troubles.” She fixed her huge, mild eyes on Malcolm, not unlike a benign Gestapo in a cow-suit. “How _is_ your – forgive me,” she added, rather more softly and a great deal more shyly, “Julius didn’t say, but I rather had the idea he was your partner." Malcolm waited for it, but completely failed to die. Jane Nicholson appeared to interpret this silence as the overflow of grief rather than a sudden confrontation with the chasm of misplaced possibility and uncorrectable lies. "You poor man. When Alexander had his heart attack, it was the worst time in my life. And with you having been _away_. Have you been together long?”

Malcolm could detect an inquisitorial, dangerous bitch at nine hundred paces, providing he was in the corridors of power. It was far more perilous to encounter a sympathetic progressive in the guise of a Nicholson chatelaine.

And when that chatelaine held up a sudden window on a life in which _he was Jamie’s,_ genuinely fucking Jamie’s, with rights and priority and a _life_ where they’d been together _long_ , well, it was a bit fucking excessive. Casually conjuring the years they’d never had. Expecting him to talk from some magic mirrorworld where he not only belonged to Jamie but had never fucking systematically carved up his own life in the name of some opinion polls.

  
People - women, too - had been arbitrarily defenestrated for less.

What followed disgraced Malcolm more than words can wield the matter. All it took was Julius Nicholson’s sister-in-law reminding him that he’d actually been a prisoner forty-eight hours previously, that he was an unemployed wreck of a dessicated seagull, and (most painfully) assuming that he’d had enough sense to build a life with Jamie where _with_ equated equality, not proximity.

Two hours later, he looked as ill as he had a fortnight after his sacking, but fell asleep. Admittedly, he was mildly humiliated, and fell asleep because dehydrated exhaustion left him no alternative,  but sleep happened to him.

His last coherent thought was that Julius wasn’t the only Nicholson with a dangerous spouse.

 

 

“I thought you’d copped off with Keira.”

Fergus had his rumpled housecat look again. Mentally, Adam divested him of five pounds, his wedding ring, and Niamh’s appalling taste in jackets. And then, because he could, he mentally divested Fergus of everything else.

“Is _that_ what her name is? No, sorry, self-loathing virgins aren’t my type.” _Untrue, untrue_. “Besides, wouldn’t I need to renounce sin, the world, and the devil?”

“And luckily for my career, you’re keen on all three!” He shifted a bit so that Fergus could also perch on the bench. “Listen, Adam. I _know_ you’re against a coalition with Dan – “

“No, if we’re going to stick in government, I’d pick the deluded pinkos over the Nazi apologists.”

“Then – “

“It’s toxic. It’s too soon. We’ve only just washed out the smell of the inquiry. We cannot be seen to be negotiating a coalition until after the next election. And they may not fucking win!”

“Of course they’ll win.” Adam wished he wouldn’t scoff. When Adam had glovepuppeted him to unelectable election in Eastbourne (a wave that they couldn’t ride forever, it wasn’t Olly Reeder’s mum), he’d spent about eight months trying to explain first-past-the-post and percentages to a man supposedly a representative of the people.

Adam finished his beer and picked up a new one.

“It’s because you hate Niamh.”

“No, Fergus, Niamh’s… great. She’s a… great girl. It’s – I just don’t think that the direction she’s – she’s not a politician, Fergus. Christ, have you _forgotten_ what went down after Goolding?”

“You only don’t want to discuss the Coalition because of some senseless antipathy to my wife. If my marriage is so appalling, why did you agree to be best man?”

There was a slow hand-clap. “Oh, bravo. You completely amoebic piss-head. It’s a good fucking job, I did, Fergus, do you still actually _have_ any other friends? Where are Liz and Angus? Paul and Callum? Tom – half our fucking _staircase_ lives in Islington, except of course they actually live in _houses_ , not fucking _cult headquarters_.”

“Shut up.”

He took another swig of his beer. “Mohamed and Sian, Chris, Sumrah – oh, except we all know why you haven’t invited Sumrah.”

“Shut up.”

Adam was fumbling for his phone. “You look like a fucking fat baby, when you do that. No, don’t worry, I’m not blaming Niamh – she’s your common-or-garden – garden, ha – “ he spilt beer over the paving, like a libation, “ – bigoted fundie race _shit_ , but doubtless even she could manage to keep her madness under cover, unlike her fucking _tits_ , by the way, old sp – or –t – but no, it’s you. Shall I ring him, then? No. She doesn’t want him here because of _you_ , because maybe _you’re_ worried that _she’ll_ see just how fucking pally you used to be with a big, black _queer_.” He was so unsteady that his breath was sloshing between Fergus’s ear and his jaw, puffs of alcoholic air on his face.

“We’ve put a fishpond in, Adam. Go and drown in it.” He headed back to the house. Adam responded with a sneer that took up most of his face and about thirty seconds to accomplish, given that his features were rapidly melting into rubber. And then he sent some texts.

 

 

Half an hour later, Fergus was still furious and more nervous than he’d ever been in his married life. Sometime after throwing up in the garden, Adam had returned to the house and begun persuading Niamh’s female church friends to drink. Given that Adam was single, able and ostensibly heterosexual, this collection of Villys and Fionas were far less horrified by his apostasy than one might have imagined, and there was now a group doing post-studenty dancing beside the patio doors. The latecomers, some of whom were definitely straight, were astonished by the numbers and enthusiasm of pretty, legless girls, and had joined in. And Adam, Sumrah, and another bloke who was _clearly_ gay and equally clearly _not from their staircase_ , Adam, wouldn’t they all have _remembered_ , were in the garden, smoking something he was 75% positive was a joint, and hooting up at the stars.

On Niamh’s face was the sort of look that would have slaughtered cattle – despite being furious with Adam for his obvious and contraband circulation of hard drink through the party, Fergus couldn’t help but wish that _some_ of those spirits had made their way to Niamh. She was standing by the bookcase, arms folded: beside her was Dan Miller, who had very obviously made the same calculations about the career-circumscribing joint, and was divided between looking uneasy and trying not to notice how folded arms shoved Niamh’s breasts up even higher. 

When Fergus looked back at the garden, the three men were gone.

One of Adam’s first tasks as a Special Advisor had been to send Fergus to a gym and have specialists observe him on the running machine. After his gait was confirmed as beyond help, Adam had forbidden him to run in public. Mindful of this advice, Fergus tried to maintain an authoritative trot down the lawn. The fishpond wasn’t the only recent innovation, and he was never in the house in fucking daylight. And he didn’t _like_ the dark (another thing that only Adam knew about him). Accordingly, there was a lot of stumbling and a fertility-knocking encounter with Niamh’s _Lourdes Tableau Feature_ before he heard giggling and murmurs from behind Niamh’s “studio”.

Adam had his back against the shed and a hand up his shirt. Sumrah, who’d been Captain of the First VIII and accordingly effing irresistible, had declined to do more than smoke a joint and snog, on the grounds of his imminent civil partnership. But his friend, Nick, who claimed to have been at the Ruskin for Fine Art, but was strangely vague on the subject of what art, if he any, he produced, had a tongue ring and ideas about using it. He was biting Adam’s neck with an alacrity and finesse that would probably have alarmed the latter, were he not reasonably drugged, reasonably drunk, and helped on by a small pill and having been half-hard all evening. He’d done this a lot of times, whenever Fergus’s twattery and emotional teetotalism got too much. It was pretty easy just to get pissed and push yourself into another man’s hands, and since he was reasonably good-looking and (intermittently) as promiscuous as an alley cat, Adam’s success rate made him feel self-assured.

It wasn’t usually _two_ men, or drug-fuelled, or taking place in his friend and government minister’s back garden, but Nick was fucking gorgeous and sliding down Adam’s front, until his knees hit the ground. Wide-eyed and dazed, Adam smelt rich, fresh earth and sucked obediently when Sumrah returned the joint to his lips. And then Sumrah was kissing him again, fond and companionable, and when he felt Nick’s lips on his prick, Adam whined and Sumrah laughed. A friendly blowjob, that was what this was, Adam thought, gulping down air when Sumrah finally let him breathe. When Nick’s tongue slicked over his balls, he almost fell forwards, but Sumrah was there, with a hand on his stomach. Adam clutched him with one hand and Nick’s coppery hair with another, and that was how Fergus saw him; Sumrah planting lazy kisses along his jawline, and Nick’s head bobbing between his legs.

He stood there in silence, shocked and almost frightened. Adam, head thrown back in ecstasy, didn’t seem to see him. After a while, with Nick still swallowing Adam’s dick, Adam’s upper body became more entwined with Sumrah’s. Fergus’s eyes were glued to Adam’s arm on Sumrah’s, and to the air of expectation with which Adam leant into his kisses. Then, he saw Adam start to undo Sumrah’s belt, and that, for some reason, what was felt like a kick in the chest. Fergus found himself staggering as he returned to the house.

 

 

“Maggie, sweetheart, put that light out.”

“ _Is_ out,” Maggie huffed, and slid down under the duvet. Her mobile phone screen made a blue glow on the underside of what her da’d always called her Young Communist duvet (it was vaguely red). The muffling made using Google harder, but she still managed to get a decent shot of Mary Drake. She frowned, and was still frowning as she clicked over to a text from Olivia. Olivia was away for the weekend, but – retaining, like most twelve-year-old girls Maggie knew, a frightening grip of social necessities – didn’t want to leave before booking Maggie’s company on the Monday school trip bus. Like all the girls in Maggie’s class, she spoke an already-strange mixture of Enid Blyton and Valley Girl, now overlaced with an attempt at Irvine Welsh in honour of the newcomer.

_Aye jubilate betch hope we dinnae hav 2 tak 1 of dem stupit school buses they are lyk death traps newayz g2g im off 2 LONDON BABY ye ken_

Maggie scowled. _U r so lucky da sed hed take us last yr to see Parliament_ [Jamie’s daughter had not inherited his dyslexia; even if she had, she’d have got that word right] _n richmun terrace n Kensington palace where kate lives n chamber ae horrors but mam always sed no_ , _witch_.

“Maggie!”

Maggie turned off her phone, rolled up and onto her back and sighed up at the ceiling. How many twelve year olds were awake at night because they were googling members of the Cabinet?

 

 

To (what still remained of) Fergus’s (residual, perhaps genetic capacity for) horror, when he’d managed to distinguish patio door from actual airspace and thus successfully re-entered his own home, he found Dan Miller, peering uneasily down the way Fergus had just come, with the expression of a Puritan miser at a pickpockets’ orgy. Niamh was signalling her enormous brown eyes, rather less “Daddy God has a plan for us” than “Do not fuck this up, you berk, or I’ll have you as a light post-prandial snack”.

“I’d been hoping to speak to Adam before I left,” Dan explained, lizard-like. Fergus blanched, then went beet red. Dan was tall, but surely not so tall that he could see Adam probably _coming in the mouth_ of - probably, well how long did men take? Fergus only knew how long _he_ took and sometimes it was quite a while, but he didn’t know about _other men_ because he wasn’t gay oh shit was he talking WAS HE TALKING stop talking no just thinking _fuck_ Niamh’s looking at you funny if _God_ doesn’t know she probably did oh god DON’T THINK just talk not about that fuck wasn’t this the part where Adam usually kicked him and murmured the first words of whatever they’d _agreed_? Except Adam was –

“ – yes,” Fergus gulped. He looked and sounded like a sweaty Labrador.

“This – project, for the long-term. Obviously, I’m very keen,”

Fergus tried to muster his features into an expression of keenness. And not guilt. Or contrition. Or sweaty fatness and shock. Fuck.

“ – but I _do_ remember what happened last time.”

 _I remember what happened when I went down the garden. I saw Adam putting his cock in a bloke’s mouth. Apparently that’s something he does_.

“I think it’s very important that I, ah, _manage_ my involvement until we can definitely _make things move_. So – get Adam to get in touch with Olly.”

“Great,” breathed Fergus, dimly aware in the bits of his brain not plastered with images of Adam, shed door, cock that he’d just signed up Adam for dealing with one of the men he hated most in the world, and that Adam might not be pleased when he’d finished having blowjobs.

“There’s, ah. There might be an opportunity soon. But not _in London_.” Dan made the necessary goodbyes and then dematerialised back to the mothership, unzipped his human suit and rejoined the rest of his lizard brethren. Or something. Fergus wondered whether there would be semen on the begonias.

“What’s the _matter_ with you?” Niamh asked him. Fergus concentrated on her breasts for some moments.

“You’re drunk,” said Niamh, disgustedly, and went back to the dancing.

 

 

Jamie was dreaming again.

The window had jammed after Caillen tried to fix it before their mam came home; Jamie'd been meant to be _watching_ them, but he was only round from their nan's ten secs and trying to read for his O Grades - if they were ever to keep him on at the seminary.

But then mam came home upset, she'd been rucking with Neil which was bad because now maybe he widnae move back, and that was pure bad for wee Aidan, at least one o'the boys should have his da at home, and Christ knew they _needed_ a man, wi' Caillen growing like a weed.

But maybe, Jamie thought, reading _Macbeth_ and thinking again what a fuckin' stupid prick the big man was, a wife like that you _listen_ , a man no' at home widnae be a bad thing, because it might mean his mam _not_ having another bairn.

And Jamie knew life wis sacred, and at least Neil had _married_ his mam, first o'the fuckers who had (although Billy's da had wanted, just his auld bitch didnae believe in divorce and nor did Jamie, _technically_ and Paddy'd been the best stepda anyway, and even _thinkin_ ' marriage would have made it better was wrong with the puir man - with what had happened), and he'd have fuckin' _died_ for his mam or any o'the wee yins but sometimes when he was back from his nan's, the noise and the ruckin' and the constant stink of baby sick and piss and dishes made him homesick for the quiet of his nan's, even if she was often a frightening auld bitch with her tarot in the back room and her big, black Bible in the front.

So his mam was upset about Neil, so Jamie'd said ah sure he'd stay, mam, at least until Aunt Cal got round, but when Aunt Cal came she had troubles of her own and showed no sign of making his mam feeling any better. So he'd stayed upstairs to read, and when it got cold enough, he was in bed beside wee Danny under his _Celtic_ duvet which Jamie'd bought himself, last Christmas, at the Lanark Sales, but he was fuckin' _hungry_ , now, as well as cold. And as he held his book up in the light of the window, where council couldnae cut off the fuckin' street lamps (and it'd be pure suicide, on their estate), it seemed like the sky was getting darker than dark, and the dark began to swallow up the sky, and there was a knock on the door, and Jamie knew, even before the bairns started whimpering, even before he _realised_ he couldnae call to his mam not to answer, he knew it was his da, the _worst_ da, and in Brighton Hospital, 2013, the forty-five year-old Jamie woke to the screams of the fifteen-year-old Jamie, and now as then, couldn't have told the worried nurses what the nightmare had been.

He fell asleep again, of course, because he always did. He remembered Malcolm's last words to him - _get better, and I'll say anything you fucking like_. Well, if it ever got to the point of asking, he knew what he'd be asking for. 

 

 

At quarter to seven, Julius work from a superlatively guilty dream in which he’d twisted Malcolm’s shirt down over his cufflinked wrists, knotted the whole thing above his head, sunk to his knees in front of Malcolm, given him the best and most thorough blowjob of his life, and then brought himself to, ah, _release_ , all over Malcolm’s thin chest and narrow hips.

Tosca and Islay, the most infernal of his brother’s overbred overfond gundogs, were walking up and down the bed and dribbling on him.

And _now_ he had to drive Malcolm Tucker back to the hospital.

He was _much too_ harassed for breakfast, but not for the almost-nine pieces of chocolate shortbread which he comfort-gulped while standing in the hallway, waiting for the underbred torment of his conscience to finish his ascetic breakfast and stalk from the breakfast-room in a new suit of startling crispness and acerbity. Julius goggled, only to be told by Jane (who was looking over-excited, as well as _judgmental_ about the chocolate) that a courier from London!!! (the exclamation marks were voiced, if not spelt) had brought several large boxes of goods down that morning. The word Jane used was “supplies”, but if the suit and shirt and glasses (oh _god_ , the glasses, they made Julius want to put his fist through a wall and then fuck Malcolm on his fist) were anything to go by, Julius thought they were _weapons_.

Malcolm stood shivering and scowling on the sweeping driveway like some sort of hairless, underfed pedigree cat. Julius considered bending him over the bonnet of the Lexus.

 

 

 

Fergus lay awake, paralysed, as the gloomy dawn crossed his marital bed. Fergus was the sort of man who’d been surprised when, one by one, the majority of his male university friends had joyfully come out. Fergus was wondering why that was. Fergus was wondering if Adam had slept with them. Fergus was wondering why he hadn’t known the kinds of things Adam liked to do with his cock, not that Adam had said anything about his cock, why couldn’t Fergus stop thinking the word cock.

He wasn’t a homophobe. He _definitely_ wasn’t a homophobe. He wasn’t even sure Niamh _was_ a homophobe. They’d been to civil partnerships. Like Jonathan’s to Lucas, Fergus’s best friend from pre-prep school. And Mark’s to Tim, whom Fergus had got on so well with at prep school. And Isaac to Sebastian, who at Westminster had definitely been Fergus’s best friend in the whole world, until – oh _Christ oh Christ oh Christ_.

Fergus wasn’t a homophobe. He wasn’t panicking. He was a genuinely tolerant man who’d voted progressively on all same-sex legislation and reform, without his hand going sweaty or his mouth drying or his legs turning to jelly on his way to vomit in the bathroom. He’d tried thinking about the one lesbian couple of his close acquaintance, and _none_ of the same emetic and anxious symptoms ensued, so it had to be something to do with men. Liking men. To touch their cocks. Cocks, why did he keep thinking about cocks – he had _two fucking Oxford degrees_ , admittedly one of them he’d paid for through the post, so _why_ did thinking about men-on-mancocks reduce his brain to stick figures (sticks. Cocks) and blobs of infantile, Rorsbachian colour. If you’d put him in front of a flashcard now, all he’d have seen was guilt. And jealousy. And cocks.

Adam was meant to be his best friend. _Was_ his best friend. Quite often, Fergus liked Adam more than Niamh, which was, he realised horribly incriminating, but then sometimes he liked Niamh more than Adam, but that was mostly about her tits which was also incriminating but in a much less gay way.

He’d spent the first half-hour of agitated self-interrogation trying to pretend he was angry about the shed.

He was panicking. He _hated_ panicking. Adam was brilliant when he was panicking, he’d lock the door and give him a chocolate or make him blow ( _blow_ ) in a paper bag or put his head between his legs _fuck_

This was going to be _so bad_ for Fergus’s career, it was going to be like David Laws except possibly more like John Prescott because Fergus suspected that the problem wasn’t going to be Adam’s dickwittery leading to the misappropriation of party funds, it was going to be the fact that in the morning Fergus was going to hire a steamroller out of the Yellow Pages and drive up and down Sumrah’s road until he’d fucking flattened him into the earth because – in a continuum that had begun when quintessential only-child Fergus was presented, as a toddler, with an infant brother who wanted to eat his trucks – Adam was _his_ , _he was one of Fergus’s things_ , _his_ best _things_ , _and nobody else could_ touch _him_.

Dawn broke. Fergus spent it wishing that, if Adam was going to be a fucking homosexual he’d had the _decency_ to write Fergus a _briefing_ , first.

 

 

“Christ,” Malcolm spat, staring up at the enormity of the sky, the remoteness of the view. It was the first time he’d really taken it all in. “Jul’us. I know you lot needed somewhere private where you could lock up your fuckin’ inbred madwomen who actually _had_ body hair, you inflatable – let me get that, Jane – “ Bright as an arc lamp, the charm switched on, and the disdainful profanity became natural warmth as he carried Jane’s riding tackle to her own Land Rover. Once in the Lexus, staring pointedly at the heat until Julius turned it on for him, Malcolm feigned total incomprehension at the ipod-docking system that piped music through the car (You were in prison for _a few months, Malcolm_ , Julius wanted to hiss) and began a long and sing-song monologue about the inadequacies of digital music in comparison with vinyl. Driving grimly through the drizzle, Julius expected him to start eulogising the harpsichord and the bagpipes.

Then the phone rang.

“Sam. I’m puttin’ you on speaker, darlin’ – oh, fuck _off_ , Julius, I can see where it fuckin’ is, I have _been in_ a car – “

“ – but apparently not this _century_ ,” Julius muttered, staring devoutly at the rain,

“ – so no dirty talk.”

“Good morning, Malcolm. Julius, I do apologise. It’s lovely to speak to you. How are you getting on with the orangery?”

Malcolm stared in disbelief between Julius’s beaming twatness, and the phone. Jamie’d had a fucking _cousin_ called orangery, hadn’t he?

“ _Samantha_.” He sounded like he was rubbing himself in sherry trifle, Malcolm thought, almost fondly. “Marvellous to speak to you. Rather tiresome, actually, m’brother’s yet to realise the _potential_ of the orangery as a _diverse encounter space_ for the local community. But we have hope.”

“Fruit-flavoured orgies for Bangladeshi nudists,” Malcolm supplied, and Julius looked _pained_. “What’s the story in Balla-fuck-a-tory?”

“I _think_ there may be a – a story, Malcolm.”

Julius started spluttering at Malcolm, who gestured irritably for him to be quiet.

“Go on.”

“Well, yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the Horsham bus crash. They’re launching the TravelFirst scheme today, to get the PFI funding. The driver was found to be over the limit, and the buses hadn’t been repaired since – “

“I do remember, Sam. Between aggressive bouts of soap-chasing, they did occasionally permit me to dab at my weeping sphincter with a copy of yesterday’s hackrag.”

Julius mouthed “sphincter” with horror, and subsided into deep but (mostly) inaudible distress.

“Thanks for that. Sorry, I’ve just got used to having to explain everything to Olly fifteen times. Well, yesterday they unveiled the memorial at Horsham, to the six children who died. Dan was there, of course, Michael, the PM, Mannion, people from the company – “

“They didn’t ask _me_ ,” Julius complained. Malcolm sighed.

“Go on.”

“Mannion was in and out of the unveiling – it’s either prostate trouble or he was pretty bloody nervous. Anyway, after that, the PM went off to do a photo-op at Southwater, where the school is. And Mannion went too, off for the weekend. But the cars went in the same direction.”

“So? Sam, is this all you’ve fucking got for me? Mannion’s place is – Surrey, isn’t it?”

“Wait,” said Julius, sounding oracular. “No. Tina’s uncle died and they were _finally_ able to get a buyer for the cottage once they’d redone the damp course – they had the most appalling gazumping, _three times_ but of course Guildford’s very much on the map now JB and Helena are part of the Cranleigh set – and they’ve found the _most_ fascinating converted watermill at Christ Church.” He broke off when he realised how Malcolm was glaring at him.

“Aside from the fact that you’re apparently very _pally_ with our political fucking _enemies_ – save it, Jul’us, I dinnae give a _fuck_ about how you used to get violated with the same lacrosse stick after _matins_ –”

“So,” Sam interjected, “the point is that he was going in the wrong direction. The same one as the PM. And I’ve had a look at the AP shots from the school thing. Mannion was definitely there, in the background. I can send them to you.”

“Wait, Sam, not on this fuckin’ thing, I can’t talk and get pictures.”

“Not the technological mastermind _now_ , I see – “

“Eh, ignore Julius, his mouth’s full. D’ye have his number? Aye, send them there. Oh, for god’s sake, Julius, pass it across, are you scared I’ll discover your ringtone’s the sound of choirboys wanking?” Sam heard scuffling for a while as Malcolm attempted to one-handedly frisk Julius and Julius, rather than drive them both off the road, conceded. There was then a total silence as Malcolm discovered that Julius’s phone wallpaper was a glossy and perfectly cropped shot of him and Douglas on their wedding-day, one which Malcolm realised wasn’t _actually_ a digital shot, but a _framed picture_ , which Julius must have _found_ and then perfectly _photographed onto his phone_. Had he done it before or _after_ Douglas left him? Malcolm peered down at Douglas’s handsome face gazing up at Julius’s delirious baldy pink one, at experienced more purely the emotion of compassionate shame than he ever had in his life.

“Send the photographs, Sam.” The quiet instruction came from Julius.

“…right. Done.”

“  - oh aye, that’s Mannion. What’s he skulking for, perfectly normal for him to be there?”

“How can you _tell_ ,” Julius demanded, taking advantage of some traffic lights to risk a quick glance across. “That’s just pixels.”

“Set of his shoulders. Something Jamie taught me, s’great for spotting fuckers at a distance. Well, well, well. Secret rendezvous.”

“And since, _as I said_ , they’re together again to unveil the TravelFirst PFI scheme that’s funded the new buses, one has to assume…”

“Great, Sam.”

“I don’t know what she sees in Peter,” huffed Julius, who’d recently been fantasising about an anorexic demicorpse with the run of a splayed duck.

“How’s Olly?”

“Courting Fatty for Education.”

“Christ. Better than Health, though. That wire-hanger abortionist put a human upside-down-cake in charge of hospitals.”

“Health At Every Size, Malcolm,” Julius said, reproachfully.

“Not when the size is a fucking grand piano. His gout’s got its own postcode.”

Sam laughed. “Olly’s scared that you’re out, by the way. He keeps circling my desk and failing to work up the courage to _ask me_ where you are.”

“Ah,” said Malcolm, and his eyes burned with the quiet satisfaction of a winged creature that had a hundred years dropping its carrion prey onto the rocks a thousand feet below. Julius found it unnerving.

“Eachan and Frankie sent an anonymous crate of skinny muffins and a family-pack of monster munch to Olly’s office yesterday. He was in the loo for about an hour.”

“Aye, he would be,” said Malcolm, and was deeply moved.

There was a pause before Sam spoke again.

“How’s Jamie?”

“…not so bad.”

“…and the two of you?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sam, this isnae  a fuckin’ _Richard Curtis_ film.”

“If it were, you’d be much better-looking,” she said cheerfully. “Well, I must go. These hard drives won’t erase themselves.”

“Grand. Just a minute, Sam – who put you on to Mannion and Mary in the first place?”

“I – I thought you might be interested.”

“ _Sam_. Who?

Julius heard her exhale. “Take me off speaker, please, Malcolm.”

Malcolm put the phone to his ear, and hit _shuffle_ on the ipod. The first song was Cole Porter, loud and clear. He shot a disparaging look at Julius, listened to the phone, muttered a couple of indecipherable questions, called Sam _darlin_ ’ again and hung up. Then he stopped the song. “Pull over.”

When Julius, white-faced, had turned off the engine, he turned at once to Malcolm. “If there’s been a – some sort of _bomb_ or _‘plane crash_ , Malcolm, I insist on being told.”

“No,” Malcolm insisted, after a pause of exactly three seconds. “No. He’s not – Sam’s seen Douglas, Jul’us. He isnae in America. He’s in London.”

“But – “ the enormous hands were shaking. “He _left_ me – he left for _America_.”

Malcolm shrugged. “He hasnae taken the job. D’ye not think… do you not think you should _call him_ , but.”

“I – surely he _must know_ , Malcolm. And when he didn’t speak to me, at my _own mother_ ’s funeral – “

Malcolm listened to this for several more minutes, before the big baldy cockrag, with a desolation in his eyes that Malcolm didn’t want to think about, apologised for his own miasma of despair and restarted the car. Once they were in motion and Julius had let the conversation hobble towards other things, Malcolm inwardly relaxed. Julius hadn’t thought to ask _why_ Douglas was stalking Mannion and Drake. It had never been entirely clear to Malcolm _how much_ Julius understood about his husband’s former career, but if it was as little as Malcolm suspected, that wasn’t a stone he wanted to lift that morning.

He was still reflecting on this as Julius eased the Lexus into the hospital carpark. “This _rain_ is _frightful_ , Malcolm, I’ll drive you down to the entrance – good _lord_.”

Malcolm looked up. “What the _fuck_ does he think he’s doing?”

“That _is_ Jamie, isn’t it? What the – Malcolm, stay where you are, we’re still _moving_ ,”

“I’ll _kill him_ , Julius. If they donate his body to science there won’t be enough to fill a jar. That drip is the last thing he’ll ever fucking see. Now unlock the doors. Jamie!”

 


	12. We've been discussing the decline of the decadent West

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some shouting, some kissing, some sulking, some lying, some shagging, some spying. 
> 
> Jamie Macdonald contemplates his return to politics, Malcolm Tucker contemplates his press officer, and Fergus feels sorry for himself. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister and her deputy make free with the best hotel in Horsham.

As the solitary lark battled bravely with the sirens, the newly-ambulant Jamie Macdonald sucked deeply on a cigarette, and rested more securely on his crutches.

 

He had joined the shivering classes of the truly demonically not-dead who congregate at every NHS aperture to suck down nicotine on yet another day that God has implausibly granted them. His cigarette was the gift of a man who, dozing in his wheelchair, looked three thousand years old, although whether that was because of the chaemo or fossilisation was hard to say. Like his companion, Jamie was wearing a hospital gown, a pair of standard-issue slippers, a cannula, and a fucking blue cotton blanket folded round his shoulders. _Everyone else_ , as Malcolm registered, splaying forward in his angry aquatic parody of a run, the one that (as even Julius, so frequently arrested by Malcolm’s grace, conceded) made him look like a man swimming doggy-paddle without any water, _everyone else_ including some people who on the law of averages hadn’t _fucking died_ a few days previously, had managed to put on a _fucking coat_.

 

With his crutches he looked like a smug spider. He was coughing slightly as he inhaled. He looked surprised, _rapt_ , and then belligerent, as Malcolm careered towards him, took the cigarette and eviscerated it beneath his heel.

 

“ – _smoking_ , you fucking – what did the doctors say, what did the doctors _fucking say_ , or were you too fuckin’ break-damaged to tell, you clueless – selfish – dinnae give a _shit_ , you – “ His eyes were watering as the smouldering ash and Jamie’s lips sent up their noxious little reminder. The odds were infinitesimal that Jamie should ever have rediscovered the appalling moonshine-equivalent catshit tobacco he’d forced down his veins in Glasgae, but if he had, it made sense that a dying auld cunt with tattooed knuckles, snoozing in the car park would be the benefactor. Malcolm grabbed a fistful of Jamie’s gown and a passing consultant stalled his Audi (Malcolm had forgotten that such gowns were usually open at the back, but could be forgiven for assuming that Jamie’d bothered to put on underwear). Jamie was chuntering defiance and minimalising and also quoting human rights law in a bastardisation that would have disgraced the shark in a skin-suit who’d represented Malcolm in court. He was not in a hospital bed and he was not in the bosom of his family. He was dominated Malcolm’s line of vision and causing him irritation for the first time in years.

 

Malcolm kissed him. He did it only after calculating that, with the exception of Julius, everyone in the car park had less than three weeks to live. He did because Jamie smelt of twenty, thirty years since. In the near-seaside light, he looked the colour of hangovers and pub fights. And his eyes, in the seconds before Malcolm kissed him, had turned triumphant: Malcolm’s hand, that stage prop in bone and sinew, had landed on his hipbone, balancing him without need for the crutch on that side.

 

Jamie had kissed Malcolm before. Dozens of times. Drunk, very drunk, very drunk and optimistic; completely rat-arsed and trying to prove a point; immediately prior to vomiting and/or maudlin, skunk-faced tears.

 

Some of the kisses had been very bad. One had happened on Jamie’s first day at Downing Street. Apart from twice, instantly denied and disappeared from history with the finesse of a committed Stalinist, Malcolm had never reciprocated. One of those reciprocations had been minimal even by Malcolm’s standards, and the other one had been just before Jamie stumbled off the curb and got hit by a homeward-bound kebab van, which although only mildly physically traumatic did seem to have tactically knocked the clinch from his head.

 

This kiss, then, was unusual. Malcolm, caught in the perfect storm of nicotine-breath, made the dragged-out-of-underworld realisation that here, in a car-park, surrounded by the dying, with a discoloured midget in a gappy hospital gown, where life and its opposites played themselves out in systematic allegories: here, here was his homecoming. Jamie’s lips parting under his and inches of space closing and disappearing between the two of them.

 

And Jamie, triumphant and kippered and kissing Malcolm in a death-scented carpark at stupid o’clock while the consultant realised he’d flooded his engine and a gently-cooling corpse arrived in the mortuary, went pliant under Malcolm’s shaking hands – that first raked unbandaged hair, then seemed to search his back – would have prolonged the kiss forever.

 

 

Except that his overloaded instincts registered – beyond the taste of _Malc_ and posho cologne and beyond it _breakfast tea_ a fucking incrimination in its own right – the sound of baldy shock somewhere over Malc’s shoulder. So then, still kissing, and fisting the steely remnants of Malcolm’s hair a little tighter, he opened one speculative eye.

 

And saw Julius, still by Julius’s car, still with its door open on the passenger side.

 

 

Jamie had once been trained for the priesthood.

 

Certain tenets of forgiveness, peace and humility had slipped from his memory, or frankly only ever seemed like technicalities. What he was still _really good at_ – and what an optimistic long-dead spiritual director had charitably termed his “spiritual gifts” – were, in lay terms, zealous hostility, brimstone, the extortion of confessions, class warfare, and rage.

 

A religious anthropologist, unfamiliar with Jamie’s love life and watching what followed with the sound down, would have thought they were watching a desert saint, possibly a leper, recognise a demon in the body of the anxious tall man, and another in the body of the whippet-thin grey man telling the consultant to fuck off, and then, in a mixture of religious ceremony, war-dance and dramatic violence, vigorously attempt to exorcise both. The crutches were brought heavily into play as Jamie went both figuratively and literally hopping mad.

 

Also, limping mad, because in the midst of Jamie’s outrage, he had also suffered a sudden, major medical relapse and could now only move in a manner that mingled the gait of Tiny Tim and Richard III, if either of those characters had ever forgotten their disabilities long enough to hurl an NHS crutch at the windscreen of a Lexus.

 

When Malcolm had taken the crutch off him _and_ forced his overcoat round Jamie’s shoulders _and_ totally missed the look Jamie gave him in response, _and_ told Julius to stop wringing his hands and get _back_ in the fucking batmobile, Jamie finally stopped rejecting the coat, clutched it around his middle and reiterated the burden of his song for the past five minutes, which was that HE, Jamie, had NEARLY DIED and Malcolm cared SO LITTLE he had started having SEX with a CLASS ENEMY. He had been NEARLY FUCKIN’ DEID (Malcolm narrowed his eyes and _spat_ that he supposed the _cough_ was down to Jamie’s shite driving as well, and not just smoking _old tumours_ in a draught) and instead of giving a _shite_ about Jamie, Malcolm was being colonised by the fucking white man’s burden. Jamie had to _shout this_ over Julius and Malcolm’s simultaneous denials, and also the professional opinion of a passing consultant psychiatrist, but shout it he did.

 

It was fucking _ridiculous_ of Malcolm to sleep with Julius – _typical_ , fucking _typical_ , because he’d always liked them posh, his fucking _wife_ had been a tight-arsed, Anglo-Bitch posh bitch (Jamie’s invention sometimes failed him when searching for the infinity-first way to describe Professor Mary Houghton, the former Mrs. Tucker. His delivery never wavered) but _at least_ she’d been _Scottish_ and had _hair_. Why the fuck, Jamie inquired, in a voice that diverted seagulls to Poole and almost suspended the activities of Brighton airfield, did Malcolm want Julius, a baldy mincer in a fucking twat suit. Which, Julius reflected, rather summed it up: not James’s little pen-portrait, but the fact that _only Jamie_ could see himself as Malcolm’s best prospect _even when_ until recently attached to a bag of his own piss.

 

And, Jamie added, not only was Olly Reeder’s economic policy – because even _Dan_ wasnae stupid to shit that out of his own mouth, oh no, some fuckin’ scatplay in Havelock House, s’what  - fuckin’ _short-sighted_ (and here both Julius and Malcolm blinked, as the latter felt something _nearly_ as arousing as the kiss spread through his body like his _own blood_ ), but Malcolm was a treacherous Judas snob-sucking fat _fuck_ who shouldnae ever speak to him again, massive cunt, DON’T follow him and DON’T find a copy of the _F_ fat-cat-fucking _T_.

 

He hobbled like a spasm-wracked spider through the double doors, elbows everywhere and his voice still scribbling black curses on the air. Julius watched Malcolm watch him go, and saw the way Malcolm’s eyes lit up. It was the same deranged light he’d often seen in Jamie’s, only turned now from a plunging, fireball, heavy-on-the-destruction of homes-and-livestock, to tiny black stars, visible and burning in the very back of Malcolm’s gaze. It meant he would follow, snaking his eyes once round the carpark and, when his gaze reached Julius, giving him the grin of many sharks.

 

Julius sighed, cast a reproachful look up at the sky which he didn’t believe was home to _anything_ , and certainly not a power omniscient enough to explain _Malcolm Tucker_ , and drove off, refusing to examine whether the sensations he’d felt on observing Malcolm Tucker kiss another man as if that man were his world were greater or lesser in their intensity than the sensations he’d experienced on waking up to yet another day and remembering that he was going to have to divorce Douglas.

 

It didn’t seem like a productive line of reasoning, or one likely to travel far.

 

He drove on towards Brighton. He needed to negotiate some storage solutions in the town, and then double back to Woodingdean, to persuade his brother to get his guns and Young Farmer _shit_ out of the orangery.

 

 

For honour’s sake, Malcolm allowed Jamie a headstart, and took the stairs. He paused at the hospital shop to buy sundries. When he reached the ward, Jamie was snugly returned to his bed, and charming a nurse with insistence that smoking was good for him, meditative, reminded him of the auld country, he’d only gone out there to be companionable, and when that nurse left Jamie’s room and was a man, Malcolm briefly and genuinely considered punching him to the ground.

 

When he stepped into Jamie’s room, Jamie was reading the _Observer_ ’s politics pull-out, and chewing gum. As soon as he registered Malcolm’s presence, he looked instantly forty years older and fifty times sicker. It annoyed Jamie deeply that he was no longer attached to anything that could have been induced to beep as if flatlining. He scowled malevolently across the _Observer_ , while implying that it was practically too heavy to lift. He was still wrapped in Malcolm’s coat, beneath the blankets. The coat was starting to resemble a _Godot_ prop, or possibly an Armani binbag. Malcolm briefly contemplated the accident of fate or neurology that meant this made his heart sing. He dropped a stack of newspapers, a _Private Eye_ , an orange Aero and some scampi crisps onto the bed. Jamie sneered elaborately (with one side of his face; evidently, the combined effects of betrayal and nicotine had given him a stroke) but, after Malcolm had opened his own copy of the Economist and seated himself in the bedside chair (carefully moving Nellie’s get-well-gift from the previous day, a bright pink teddy, to place of honour on the bedside cupboard), he heard crunching. After a time, the crunching stopped. A foot kicked Malcolm’s magazine. He looked up.

 

Jamie had the _Observer_ open on a double-page-spread regarding Labour. Jamie was jabbing at one of the images. Upside down, Malcolm recognised Olly Reeder, still more “foetus” than “portrait in the attic”, still essentially made of pipe cleaners, still with the face of a pissed-off cartoon, and still with the spit-flattened hair of a wartime child dancer. The sort of wartime child-dancer who’d got nobbed and then Blitzkrieg’d during _Children’s Hour_. And that little _shit_ had his job.

 

Malcolm looked from the picture – beside a scathing infographic of Reeder’s so-called “achievements” – to the kind of eyes homesick missionaries saw in their worst hellfire nightmares. Jamie, whose mouth had tasted of sharp and ash and _home_ , now had scrampi crisp dust stickily visible around his lips. He was scowling the scowl of a hungover pirate.

 

“What the _fuck_ is Reeder doing?” he demanded. “And why in _Christ_ are you _letting him_?”

 

Malcolm stayed for the next sixteen hours.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, not far from Brighton, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, her Tory deputy, and his Coalition equivalent, were all due for a photo opportunity. Fergus had rung in sick, presumably a consequence of his terrible wife’s party. Mary was not sorry. This was _her_ wheeze, after all: a celebration of her time in office (a celebration with which Williams could hardly be expected to concur, fat ginger wimpy arse that he was), marked with the unveiling of Peter’s brainchild (a decided improvement on “lovechild”), the TravelFirst scheme.

 

25 of Britain’s top international corporations had agreed, in exchange for tax rebates, to create apprenticeship progammes for school-leavers, and to offer placements abroad for bright graduates, who returned to Britain after two years. It was a public-private partnership which offered genuine progress, and – as Peter had noted, _almost_ earning one of Mary’s smiles – it had a fair chance of producing a crop of young entrepreneurs who didn’t _fucking disgrace themselves_ every time they opened their mouths on the opposite side of the channel.

 

The revenue from the scheme had funded ( _was funding_ , technically, but this was a detail Peter elided in every environment save _the privacy of his own head,_ which was - thank god - not yet the property of Google Glass) several schemes to benefit rural communities – include the roll-out of new school buses across the South East. Crucially, replacing the make and model which had been involved in the Horsham bus crash. It was hoped that _all_ public company school buses would be improved in due course. Not only had the crash been the worst crisis of the Coalition, but TravelFirst had only been made possible because of a domino effect that began when Nicholas Amwar, executive director of a large corporation particularly famous for its tax avoidance, agreed to come on board.  Following their divorce, the one thing Nicholas and Jasmine Amwar had agreed on was the need to keep Mia in as much of her routine as possible. So, when Nicholas moved permanently to London, she and her mother remained in Horsham. Peter did have some misgivings about exploiting her father’s guilt that his inability to overcome an addiction to exotic dancers with complicated viva arrangements had resulted in his daughter taking the bus to Horsham High every morning, rather than in her mother’s jeep to the Lady Grace Day School. Of the six children killed in the Horsham bus creash, Mia had taken the longest to die.

 

But Peter’s worst misgivings stemmed not from the exploitation of a man who was already pretty morally rotten, but from the fact that – given the small number of J3354 buses still circulating on the Sussex roads, albeit beneath a TravelFirst paintjob – he was lying to his Prime Minister. For a DPM to mislead the PM was almost written in to the job description (and sometimes _was_ written in, when a Coaltion DPM came from the junior party). But Peter had particular reason to mind about Mary.

 

Something had happened to Peter. Not the massive increase in power but a _genuine desire_ to be at work every day. Mary let him wear a tie and might have shot him with her own rifle had he appeared with his shirt untucked (rightly judging him, in that event, to have become collateral in a zombie apocalypse).

 

She didn’t particularly _like_ him. He had no idea why she’d appointed him her Deputy Leader. Sometimes her face and indeed her _eloquent words_ made it clear that she didn’t either.

 

Not only did she think he was shit, she thought she was cleverer than him.

 

She was right.

 

To say that the average Tory male – even the chauvinist, residually self-satisfied hair-flopper with the remains of a face that women would once have walked into traffic to touch – secretly desires to fling himself down at the feet of a woman capable of re-enacting the Tillburn address, and whose cool-eyed contempt makes him wriggle like a puppy, would be a gross over-simplification of the party once termed “the natural party of government”.

 

It was, however, entirely true of Peter. He revered the woman as a queen. And that, of course, was not necessarily fatal. It had a precedent.

 

But the problem was the first time Georgia Drake (big hair, thigh gap, yowl like unoiled brakes) threw a shit fit in close temporal proximity to the Horsham bus crash, two days in to her mother’s premiership. Mary had been up all night consoling her hysterical princess of a daughter, when a West Sussex local-authority-funded bus, the out-of-date and dangerous J3354, overturned at the hands of a sleepy and half-bladded local-authority driver.

 

Mary’s haggard face had played equally well and badly across different media outlets, who variously praised her genuine emotion, and criticised her disfiguring grief for stealing the spotlight from the families. Peter never saw her sit down for sixteen hours, until they were in the car from Horsham to Brighton, her face going whiter and whiter until she told Peter to hold up the fucking large-print version of the _Daily Telegraph_ so she could have a cry in peace. When he tried to shove his handkerchief underneath the _Court Circular_ , she ground her heel into his handmade shoes. Peter, with the natural bad timing of a man who’d been caught impregnating his secretary halfway through his Diamond Wedding party, fell in love.

 

Obviously, it could never happen. He’d entertained some hopes that it might, lost half a stone, and enjoyed a temporary renaissance in marital congress after realising that Tina and Mary used the same range of skincare products (all over). He’d come to find court shoes, frightening highlights and withering contempt magnified by angular  lens-frames deeply erotic. And he also knew for a _fact_ , having interrupted Emma on an emergency supplies run before a short-notice flight to Washington, that she wore _stockings_ (Peter, with similar originality, was aroused by black lace underwear, Janet Reger teddies, and French girls).

 

Peter had thought of linking TravelFirst to Horsham primarily to cheer Mary up. And now - just as, on a quite different point on the political compass, Julius Nicholson excitedly took his first booking for use of the Woodingdean Conference and Breakout Group Resources Centre (and wondered how _exactly_ he’d break the details to Malcolm) - he stood exultantly beside her, wondering exactly _why_ he’d spent his life chasing bunnies only to toss his heart over his tie for a woman whose HRT patches he'd once been sent out to buy. And now, just as Julius pencilled _Labour Party all-day: Redefining Media Strategy_ into the virgin foolscap of his Smythson, Peter smiled firmly but caringly at the Sussex press, and assured them that _every_ bus from here to the coast was now the updated J4665 model, and not the outdated, outmoded, and – of course – _dangerous_ J3354.

 

It was a fairly safe bet, he’d decided. He was going to _call_ the contractors – himself, actually – and check. There were just one or two, and if the bus company happened to _catch_ the evening news, they were hardly going to let on that they hadn’t rolled out the new wagons as quickly as all that. Just had to get through the photo-op, and –

 

Drat. Emma was in his eyeline. It had made sense, for Mary to hire a woman as her premier aide, given that she snapped men like pencils. And, to be fair, Emma hadn’t made a nuisance of herself with her new airs and title, apart from some prolonged but entirely understandable cruelty to Phil, who was currently making a blitheringly bad job of chatting up a girl from the _Argus_. Emma hovered until the speeches and handshaking were through, led the claque for the applause, and weaved her way through the crowd to catch them just as security were leading them offstage. Her face boded ill – probably, the PM was going to have to hare off to London _alone_ , depriving him of two hours’ travel time (perhaps more, given the fucking awful roads) mentally eroticising her knees and hoping one brushed his. He applauded the onset of smaller, austerity-conscious staff cars.

 

Emma wet her lips. “Prime Minister, there’s an important call from London. It’s a matter of security so they requested – there’s an office above us, in the hotel.”

 

Mary looked over her glasses at Emma with bored but not uncharitable regret. “Really? Right. Are those for me to sign – put them in the car, I’ll do them on the way back. _Is_ it urgent?”

 

Emma appeared to hesitate. “They said so.”

 

“Right. Peter, you’d better come too.”

 

“Does that door lock?” Peter blinked at her. She’d said nothing to him since the left the stage, nodding and smiling to the hotel manager (clearly wetting himself with excitement that urgent state business would be conducted from his office – probably he’d have the phone put in a glass case) as he apologised that his office was a mess (it was). Reiterating the nature of the call, she made it clear she’d be grateful if he’d ensure nobody used the top corridor, and stood like a gracious empress as the poor sod practically bowed himself backwards out of her presence. Until the question, Peter’d wondered if she’d forgotten his supposedly vital presence.

 

“I…” She rolled her eyes.

 

“I can see that it does. Get on with it.”

 

The phone was off the hook. Mary lifted it, and Peter scrabbled with the door. He heard her say _hello, yes, yes, thank you_ before he’d finished, and turned back to see her replacing the receiver.  She rolled her eyes _again_ at his moue of surprise, and unzipped her handbag. Startlingly, she went on to remove a packet of wet wipes, a pack of travel tissues, and a _condom._

 

“Who – _what_ …”

 

“I had it put through. We’ve got about thirty-five minutes; more than enough, unless your behaviour over the past year has been quite _epic_ over-compensation. _Stop_ gawping, Peter, I do find imbecility attractive but at this moment I’d rather you put your mouth to good use. We won’t be disturbed – _Christ_ , Peter, we’re going to _fuck._ Get in that chair and we can _get on_ with it.”

S

pluttering, light-headed, and wishing his brain would catch up with where his body was enthusiastically and undeterredly going, Peter found himself staggering in the right direction. “ _Here_?”

 

“Do you suggest I fuck you in Downing Street? _Chequers_? This room is clearly rarely cleaned, and if they _do_ ever swab it for your DNA, we’ll both be long out of office, and you’ll just say you were fucking a chamber-maid. Get in the chair.”

 

Her blouse was undone, and at this arresting sight, Peter stopped dead; she pushed him with both palms, and the backs of his knees hit the chair. He sat, gaping, and belatedly thought to reach _up_.

 

Her eyes shut. He’d done that. Gradually, even the combination of memory and miracle was letting his senses catch up with each other.

 

“Fuck. I’m sorry if you feel the lack of a bed, but personally I’ve never needed one.” She was hitching her skirt up – he genuinely glimpsed an authentic suspender belt, but then she’d readjusted herself, and was re-crossing the room, leaving Peter wondering if he should have undone his belt and flies quite so quickly. “Condom,” she explained, over one shoulder, and then – seeing the state in which she’d left him – gave him the briefest hint of a smile. He watched as she ripped open the packet with her teeth, threw it efficiently into the bin, and recrossed.

 

“Put it on.” Her voice had dropped about an octave. Peter was briefly reminded of the games mistress in his co-educational prep school (his father’s brief capitulation to his stepmother’s progressive tastes, a year before their divorce), and had a second to wonder whether _that_ was what the whole thing was about, before Mary was back hitching up her skirt, authentic suspender belt, and _Christ alive_ the Prime Minister of Great Britain had been governing the country all day without her knickers.

 

Peter’s hands were shaking as he tried to get the condom on his, by now, painfully hard cock. It didn’t help – well, it helped a lot – that she was now kneeling astride him, running a hand through her hair and then using that _same_ hand to balance on his shoulder as she reached up and over him to stow her glasses, safely, on an overhead shelf. This meant that Peter’s face was temporarily full of her breasts – a _far_ more interesting view than his own genitals – but when she looked back, she frowned and slid the condom on with an ease that should have seemed _at least disparaging_ , not incredibly hot.

 

“You’ve gone awfully quiet,” she smiled, and flicked her hair back from her face. Peter started to burble something, but she just laughed. “Right. Don’t come ‘til I say.”

 

For the first time, Peter noticed how flushed her face was, and how her legs were already twitching. As she slid down, and then up, and then repeatedly _both_ , until he was _sure_ he was effectively just being used as a _sex toy_ by this – by this _siren_ whose hair hung over her face and who kept _swearing_ at him - triumph started to coil in his stomach. He replaced her hand between her legs. _This_ , at least, he was good at.

 

 

 

Douglas’s refusal to become Our Spook In Washington had gone down as badly with his employers as the offer had grated with his then-husband. The spook in question was now being driven round A Certain Area of London, in a furious temper for three reasons. One: Julius was now unquestionably shagging Malcolm Tucker in the Nicholsons’ ancestral pile of cash and woodrot. This was despite the cad's numerous and clearly _insincere_ avowals that the _only_ thing he wanted to make with Malcolm was the _great socialist tomorrow_. Two: spending half of their last joint account in _Liberty_ hadn’t made Douglas feel better. And three, his employers had _noticed_ he was still in England and had told him to come into London for a Saturday recruitment thing and generally _make himself useful_.

 

The taxi turned away from the place where people stupid enough to imagine MI6 really had a public building thought that spies worked. It also drove past the place where MI6 actually worked – because nobody would let the candidates go _there_ – and up A Certain Street reasonably close to the City of London. A recruitment agency stood between a Pret and a print shop. It had a logo with some initials on it, a reception desk and a receptionist, a lift with one button and a variety of plausible and well-executed graphic banners for the other businesses in the building. These all had contact details including telephone numbers that did genuinely ring - if nothing else.

 

The wall had an infographic explaining the sectors which the recruitment agency served. And in the basement – the one floor of the building actually in use – thirty variously power-hungry, mentally-unstable, commitment-phobic and/or congenitally dishonest seekers after the service of their country waited. They looked like ordinary young people, and they were all desperate to be spies. From the eighteen thousand applicants, they were thirty of the final nine hundred.

 

Douglas spent a desultory three hours introducing himself as Mr Alex Smith and chatting through their various competencies and concerns.  For approximately eighty per cent of that time, he was sulking about Julius and wondering if any of the boy spies would like to fuck him. He’d already weeded out the thrill-seekers, the nice people, and the one exquisite but concerned young woman who was smart enough to ask why, if ever, people chose to leave the service. Drinking a coffee brewed for him by recruitment manager Ms Anne Brown, he watched, through a two-way mirror, the final exercise in which candidates role-played last-minute negotiations before the total destruction of Western democracy, supervised an Urdu listening test, and then named (to an assistant, Ms Alice Brown) the six viable candidates for espionage that he’d identified fifteen minutes after entering the building. Then, in a slightly worse temper than when he’d arrived, he slipped a telephone number into the breast pocket of Candidate 426, climbed into the returning taxi (coincidentally driven by one Mr Adam Brown) and was driven to the building where, unlike the recruitment agency and the art deco fantasy, people had a variety of surnames and actual intelligence took place.

 

 

In the duty manager’s office of the best hotel in Horsham, the Prime Minister of Great Britain kicked the Deputy Prime Minister of Great Britain, not unaffectionately, in the thigh. “I can go again.”

 

His look of alarm made her laugh. “I… I’m not _sure_ …”

 

“I know, old love.” She dipped, kissed him, and caught his lower lip between her teeth. “On your knees.”

 

 

Douglas swished coatily through the doorway, upset several underlings and swept with unnecessary drama but excellent cheekbones up to the floor where a small, aged woman with complicated hair and a great deal of fissured scar tissue looked at him as though he was a silly poof in a jacket. Douglas was there to make enquiries about surveillance on the Prime Minister. And surveillance _by_ the Prime Minister. When he related the story of the late-night phonecall, coupled with the jpegs he’d retrieved from one of the underlings between entrance and lift shaft, the woman looked unimpressed.

 

“I think we have a problem,” Douglas insisted, just in case a woman who spoke twelve languages had been struck temporarily stupid rather than uninterested. “I do _know_ why Mary was elected.”

 

Zara’s voice was cold. “Whatever attachments Mary may have formed, she’s eminently capable of completing her mission. More capable than _you_ , which is why we’ve kept you out of politics.”

 

“No, ma’am, that’s not what I’m saying. Mary won’t be the problem, it’s Mannion. He’s much too keen. He’s whirling too close and it will damage the project.” Zara’s intercom buzzed, and she hit a button to silence it. Douglas spread his hands. “Zara, this isn’t the moment when I say we shouldn’t have appointed a woman, you _know_ that. I’m saying that it turns out that we shouldn’t have appointed Mannion. We couldn’t have foreseen it. A man who for decades has only wanting to fuck dim-witted ingénues made by splicing the cast of Spearmint Rhinos with _Country Life_ has suddenly, in the twilight of his coronary, gone for – saving your presence – the most intelligent woman in Britain.” His employer snorted. “I _know_ how unlikely it was. I prepared the files on him.”

 

“So you aren’t saying she’s _cracked_?” Douglas felt a port-wine stain spreading from the corners of his neck. “You’ve always been jealous of her. The one contemporary you couldn’t overtake.”

 

“We all crack eventually. And she’s been in the project rather longer than I have. I think she should be told to be careful. When did you last hear from her?”

 

“Aside from our scheduled conversations, she requested a hang-up call to her location in Horsham, earlier today. I made it myself.”

 

“Unlike you.”

 

“I wanted to hear her voice. Douglas, this is sounding rather a lot like criticism.”

 

“I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.” He smiled at her. “I’ve turned down Washington to be near a man I’m divorcing.” The smile was not returned. Tea was sipped. “I can see it’s tiresome for you,” he tried again. “The two old oaks bending within six months of each other. As it were.” Zara replaced her teacup and glided from behind her desk. “Do you have this problem with the children?”

 

As she passed the edge of the desk, a tiny light flashed and her office door swung open. She smiled up at him, and Douglas saw a girl’s delight in the trick. “Clever, isn’t it? A sensor on the spokes of the wheels. And in answer to your question, Douglas, no. Happily, all Millennials are sociopaths. Did you pick me a few today?” Matching his pace to the progress of the chair (and then, once they were out in the corridor, valiantly trying to _keep up_ ), Douglas chatted politely about the candidates even as he realised he was being escorted out. Rather as if he were a prospective housemaid who might pocket the silver. Only when they reached the lifts did Zara ask his advice. “What would you suggest, old love?”

 

“It’s a pity we can’t have him killed. Run over by one of his ‘new’ buses, perhaps. Or let’s test out whatever machine you’re building for the obliteration of Steve Fleming - ?”

 

Zara smiled her acknowledgment, and pressed the lift button for him. “Keep an eye on Malcolm Tucker for me. If there’s a problem, it’ll be him.”

 

 

 

What with licking Mary until she came, Peter forgot to ring the bus company.

 

 

 

Saturday afternoon and Fergus’s wife was feeling self-satisfied. Not only had there been numerous congratulatory texts and tweets, but Dan Miller had actually sent them a _card_. Fergus was being _useless_ , all acid tummy and psychosomatic insta-flu on the sofa, but Niamh was disposed to make him camomile tea in her Jesus mug (Fergus thought miserably of Adam’s coffee and Adam’s cock, and all the TfL strategy documents going unwritten while he lay foetal on the sofa, listening to Niamh _yack on_ ), because this splendid social success had to be _partly_ down to him. After his lovely blue-ink gratitude on proper thick Basildon Bond (tucked _inside_ the card, which was a _sweet_ print of World Peace as drawn by Year 3 of Essendine Primary School, Tower Hamlets – Fergus had been _horrid_ about that one), he’d included two lines for her bunged-up husband, evidently scheduling a meeting. Niamh sat back and congratulated herself on helping to bring about a great new coalition of red and yellow. Fergus just felt sick. Dan’s _exact_ words had been “Fantastic party”, which was a fucking lie, and, just below, “Get your Adam to get in touch”.

_Your Adam_.

 

If not a deliberate _lie_ , it was still a fucking cruel _mistake_. Fergus curled tighter around his stomach and the remote (which was pointing directly at a muted re-run of _Yes Minister_ , one to which he’d long known all the words. As did Adam. The homosexual), and reflected, unhappily, on all the emotional crises of his life which had resulted in flu-like symptoms and a nervous bowel. Adam was probably having exotic sex with people who didn’t have diarrhoea. That was the sort of life Adam led.

 

 

 

 

“I don’t want you to smoke because it’s disgusting.”

 

“You kissed me.”

 

“And instantly fucking regretted it.” Jamie gave him a slow smile that was nine parts teeth to fifty-five parts historic, astronomical smugness: Jamie’s Comet of multi-coloured bruising and self-satisfaction.

 

“You fucking loved it.”

 

“You loved _this_.” Malcolm unfolded the newspapers again – he’d had to move some of the detritus when a _nurse_ came in (she was only a wee lassie and it wasn’t fair to subject her to a sixteen-page-political-pullout where literally _every_ politician’s image had been defaced by Jamie’s rendition of a spurting biro cock). In doing so he’d accidentally revealed the carcase of the Peking duck and cardboard coffin of the death-pizza (solid cheese, stringy cheese, liquid cheese and _extra_ cheese, ensuring each greasy disc of pepperoni was caught in an inch of yellow, like flies in amber) delivered to the hospital three hours before. Most satisfyingly, the foot of the bed was heavy with typed-up strategy notes.  When he’d waited too long for a reply, he looked up and discovered, uneasy, that Jamie had his eyes fixed on Nellie’s bright pink teddy, leaning rakishly against a rolled-up copy of the _Times_. Before Jamie could fully articulate his guilt, Malcolm asked, _Come back to London_.

 

When the nice nurse who’d been so _eloquent_ on the incompatibilities of hyper-fat junk food and Jamie’s nice new diagnoses glanced through Mr Macdonald’s window _again_ , some minutes later, a nasty row was in progress. It wasn’t _loud_ , as had been the case at various interludes over the earlier evening and entire afternoon, but it was nonetheless disturbing. Mr Macdonald was alleging something in an emphatic and frankly rather _repetitive_ manner, and his cadaverous friend – who really looked as though he should be in _Oncology_ or at the very least _Nutrition_ – was waving skeletal and apparently double-jointed hands about as if trying to extract logic from the _sky_.

 

She jumped when their voices rose. Mr Macdonald was claiming that his friend would say anything that anybody wanted to hear, and that his friend’s parents had not been married, and that his friend had missed his vocation as a writer of children’s fairy stories or other outrageous [redacted] fiction. His friend was asking Mr Macdonald, with some urgency, to clarify this remark, because although he had made it fifteen times in a significantly lower number of minutes, it was no more illuminating than the first time. Mr Macdonald then moved his body in a manner reminiscent of toddlers being asked to leave the Early Learning Centre, or in the manner of a man who, waking suddenly, finds himself covered in killer bees.

 

His friend refused to react to this at all, beyond some brief blasphemy and a sudden interest in the sports pages of the _Independent_. Mr Macdonald then roared _exactly_ like a toddler being turfed out of a toy shop, repeated his allegation about his friend’s parents, and said that Malcolm ought to run a fucking PR company, all things to all fucking people, it could not _be like that again_ because Jamie might have been stupid enough to _forget_ his wee bairns all afternoon, living on the fucking hope of one lousy kiss for twenty years does that to a man, Christ they’d been right about his _brain injury_ but he wasn’t going to roll over for some dessicated old fucking _con_ who wanted to rip up his, Jamie’s family. And take his bairns, in exchange for getting Jamie _away_ from her.

 

Jamie threw a globe of greasy newsprint at Malcolm’s head. Malcolm ducked, which was the only sign that he was still alive. When he straightened up, his eyes were the eyes that murderers see in nightmares, and his profile was reminiscent of the vultures that feed by clawing out the still-twitching flesh.

 

“She said what?”

 

As a would-be priest, Jamie had been pretty nonchalant about the elements of his training connected with exorcism, rightly judging the occult to be less frightening than his da on one of his irregular visits from the pub, or his gran without her wig. All things considered, he stood his ground pretty well as Malcolm made eye contact and more or less ripped Claire’s words - the  _threat_ \- he'd help Claire  _take his bairns_ \- from his brain. 

 

“ – even if it wasnae true,” Jamie rallied, some time later, his eyes suspiciously red and feeling his marriage to be less stable than the pizza box on the floor, “it’s only now I’m fuckin’ _cured_ of ye that you – “

 

“ – shut up. Haud your fuckin’ whist. I - those girls, Jamie, I _love_ them and why the _fuck_ would I _want you_ if your heart was _broken_ without those - I _said_ , Jamie, I _told you_ , get fuckin’ better and I’ll say _whatever_ the fuck you like.”

 

“Oh aye, until your wee agent sorts out jack-a-fuckin’-nory thrice weekly or a column in the Daily Con or a fuckin’ – fuckin’ _one man show_ with wildlife ‘cept instead of _Frozen Planet_ it’ll be

 _Frozen In Time Fuckin’ Political Conscience, Malcolm Tucker Disnae Have Any_.”

 

Picking one of these stupidities almost at random, and fantasising Jamie’s death by cannula, Malcolm asked, “ _Agent_?”

 

“That poor wee Sam, busy executin’ her master plan – “

 

“Jamie, there is no fuckin’ plan. You were deid and it was – shite. Now you’re not dead. Great. That’s my plan. I am _unemployed_. The country’s going to the fucking _cousins_ of the fleas on the dogs – “

 

“ – aye, and now you’re unemployed, now you realise _sacking me_ – “

 

“ – you resigned.”

 

“Fuck you, I was driven out." He looked at Malcolm. "Of course you've got a fucking plan." It seemed for a second like he was fighting not to  _cross himself_. " _What's all this been_ , if not me _gviing you a fucking plan_. I may not have signed a tiny-baby-potato-head _fatwa_ – “

 

“ – if you didn’t resign I never fucking sacked you, you’re technically still employed.” He shoved a fistful of the newspapers towards Jamie, the ones with the cocks drawn on, the ones with paragraphs of tiny insane crabbing, planning the kind of ritual slaughter of the Cabinet that could be conducted in symphony by every Westminster resident who’d had their benefits shat on by a fat-arsed, inbred elite. Jamie, although he was fond of Mary Drake’s legs, had also planned her funeral procession, marking with large and unnecessarily vigorous Xs such sections as “checking is she actually dead” and “place for choir of fucked by student loans”. Now, the artist stared down at his handiwork, and Malcolm, who continued to veer between desire and murderous fury in a mental oscillation that registered strangely as _homecoming_ , waited hopefully. Then Jamie shoved the papers away. “If we were gonnae do something _stupit_ ,” he murmured, screwing up one gameplan for Piss On Him: Olly Reeder (v 3.0), “I’d rather blowjobs than politics, eh.” There wasn’t even a _smile_.

 

"We were good together. We could be again."

 

"Bollocks we could. Put those papers in the bin." He was almost disappointed when Malcolm did.

 

“D’you know _why_ I hate you to fuckin’ _smoke_?” Malcolm suddenly asked, looking at the floor. “Because I always reckoned, whatever _shit_ either of us pulled – I said _either_ , okay, jesus – life’d give us the time to sort it out. They always did. Do you remember, eh, on the paper? We were fuckin’ _unbeatable_. _”_

 

“I didnae _leave_ the paper. Or anything fuckin' else."

 

“I know, pet, I know.” Malcolm dodged the _boulder_ of a look Jamie gave him, at that, and plunged on. “Prison took time. All those fuckin’ borin’ _group meetings_ and _literacy classes_ – “ Malcolm paused, theatrically, hoping for a loyal, low-down snigger, but none came, “and, Christ, security for the _day release_ scheme as if a four-hour shift in a _garden centre_ – no, o’course I fuckin’ didn’t, get to piss – would leave me time for a crackpipe and world domination. And that was my fault, but I _knew_ I’d get out. I still thought we’d have _time_. But – the fucking _smoking_. You still look how you always do,” Malcolm sighed, and Jamie’s built-up objections suddenly collapsed, because Malcolm was looking at him as if just _looking_ could build him up from nothing, summon him out of air. Once upon a time, that look had made Jamie feel like fire and air, as if he’d chucked all the worthless shitty _scrap_ of him in the Leith and brought himself up new. Now, a look from Malcolm made him feel he’d spent the past few years building on sand, unaware of the encroaching tide and the end of the day. He shivered a little, tried to speak.

 

“Didnae waste _my_ time. Nellie.”

 

“Aye.” Malcolm took Jamie’s hand. He’d spent half a second _planning_ to do it, but they both found themselves staring down as if the conjunction and laced fingers might make a bomb go off. “Wee yin. Looks the most like you.” He felt, rather than saw, the daffy grin light up Jamie’s face. “But – you _wheeze_ , Jamie. It’s no fuckin’ coincidence – oh jesus, don’t _start_ – “

 

“ – man who had to _breathe in a bag_ man who widnae give me a _key_ but had to give spare inhalers to the fuckin’ _cleaners,_ man who died the _one time_ he tried a joint – “

 

“ – we _need time_ , Jamie. Fucking buckets of it. And – I’ve fucked up enough without you getting…”

 

“Malc, but you’re _shite_ at this,” said Jamie, quietly and softly in a voice that Malcolm had never heard him use.  He wondered, brief and desperate, if it was something to do with _children_ , and that thought, the idea of them, and the memory of what Claire had falsified, crunched into his ribs as if someone were attempting CPR. His body, involuntarily jerked forwards, and at Jamie’s curious look, which was suddenly registering like a coronary, as if someone had attached weights to Jamie’s eyelashes and made every fucking _miniscule movement_ oscrape like _knives_ against his heart, Malcolm heard himself start.

 

“Jamie, I –“

 

“Don’t have to fucking _say_ it.” His face was suddenly very close. He saw Malcolm blink, and knew he'd guessed right. He gripped Malcolm’s hand so hard it hurt, and hated himself for the choke in his voice. “I’m not dying, _am I_.”

 

 

It was nearly light when Malcolm finally left the hospital, several crisp tenners and an IOU for air miles deposited at the nurses’ station. Jamie’s face was slightly wet, but he was asleep. Malcolm reeled down the corridors with the incautious step of the drunk or the bereaved. When he finally got outside, he reached into his pocket and produced the filters, tobacco, rolling paper and lighter purloined from Jamie’s unwashed possessions. For the first time since he first crossed the border, he rolled himself a cigarette on the boot of a car, ministering delicately to its construction with his fingertips. As he smoked it, a seagull took off from the roof of reception, and whirled off towards the coast, calling out its everlasting complaint, its harsh song. Malcolm smoked and watched its silhouette, until it disappeared, and then he looked across the carpark, down and back to Brighton, wondering how soon, exactly, Claire Macdonald would wake her daughters and visit her husband, and what her husband would say to her, when she did.


	13. Be Afraid Of Your Parents, Be Afraid Of Their Clever Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sundays are dreadful but Mondays are worse. 
> 
> Woodingdean Conference and Breakout Group Resources Centre are preparing for their first booking, but neither the Nicholsons nor their lodger are really in the mood to celebrate. With Julius, Jamie and Fergus all reaching breaking point - and the strain starting to show on one girl in particular - is it any surprise Malcolm's feeling uncomfortably Malchiavellian?

Sunday morning.

 

Lovely.

 

Let’s take a role-call.

 

Adam is confused as to why Fergus won’t return Fergus’s texts. Niamh Williams is wondering why her husband’s stomach flu (which is _American_ , Fergus, and _not a real disease_ ) hasn’t included any vomiting or indeed toilet trips for the past twelve hours.

 

Julius is feeling guilty that he hasn’t mentioned the Labour booking to Malcolm, and flattering himself that Malcolm has even slightly noticed that Julius has something he’s trying to hide.

 

Sam, being a sensible woman, is getting a massage and altering her iPhone settings so that any calls from Glasgow area codes automatically ring out on silent.

 

Dan Miller is secretly using his wife’s collagen-plumping lip cream on his forehead.

 

Ben Swain is having sex with a woman, which would be inexplicable were she not a publishing intern. She is a publishing intern in the office that’s about to launch Ben’s second book, though, which is inexplicable unless Newsnight’s actually _sponsored_ the damned thing in order to generate another historic interview of bovine sweat and spattering stupidity.

 

Olly Reeder is waking damply from another chilly nightmare about Malcolm appearing at the end of his bed and offering to take out his _other_ appendix, an organ which he claims can be located by _fishing_ for it with a line made entirely of barbed wire.

 

And where was Claire? Claire was in the hospital carpark, having left Mass early after Nellie bit Maggie and Ruth released a hamster and Maggie, having pretended not to be able to find the hamster only to reveal it nestling in her jumper after Ruth’s tears became sonic conductors for her wails, got smacked in the arm by Ruth and called her a fucking bitch. This last, unfortunately, during the really quiet bits of the intercessions for world peace. The hamster was now confined in the car’s glove-box, doubtless (Claire reflected) shitting everywhere, but hopefully shredding Jamie’s London A-Z (which they _didn’t fucking need_ ) and receiving sufficient oxygen due to the fact that the glove-box wouldn’t shut.

 

Placing herself strategically between Ruth and Maggie, and settling Nellie and her crackling scroll of paintings-for-da on one hip, she marshalled the troops up to Jamie’s room. She could see at once that he’d barely slept, and when Ruth dropped her offering of grapes unceremoniously on top of the TV set, it was red hot. He was better – fully ambulant, disentangled from the tubes and now only intermittently monitored. There was talk of discharge on Wednesday morning.

 

She wasn’t _sure_ that he was feeling guilty. The usual signs, after all, were absent: he wasn’t dangerously pissed and waltzing around the kitchen doorjamb at three o’clock in the morning; he wasn’t holding  a bouquet of flowers big enough to cover the crumple or ding on the car, and he wasn’t the chief penitent of a quartet of blue-eyed miscreants ranged remorsefully around the shattered aftermath of their last-but-one wedding present. Nonetheless, as her family variously skulked, skipped, stomped and shuffled their way down to the hideous hospital café, Claire could have sworn she heard breaking glass.

 

 

Maggie and Ruth were choosing (criticising) sandwiches at the counter when he told her. Nellie was doing something with a tomato roll and a doughnut that was slightly more disgusting and toxic than anything managed by the coalition, and Claire was reaching for a wet wipe when Jamie took her wrist.

 

“I told him, you know,” Jamie said, and Claire was suddenly reminded of what he’d used to do for a living. “What you’d said.”

 

“Jamie – “ She sounded annoyed, his wee wife. He made a cage of his fingers against the table, and continued.

 

“When you said – that he’d promised, if we split up, he’d help you get custody of the girls. Well, he was lying. I know what you actually told him. That he could stay until I was fixed.”

 

A squawk from the counter meant Maggie had swiped the last salad baguette (Ruth, who hated vegetables, had wanted the leaves for Hammy). Jamie removed his hand, and both parents sat back abruptly.

 

“Are you telling me he’s staying?” Claire asked, a while later, when Nellie was Maggie’d started texting and Ruth was biting her crusts into even lengths so she could build a little fort out of bread. Jamie shrugged. She laughed. “It makes sense. He’ll need someone to do the dirty work if he wants to crawl his way back. And don’t say he’s _changed_ , Jamie.”

 

“The weans – “

 

“No, I mean it. He’s no different. He willnae _stop_.”

 

“He has stopped. He’s no’ all – spin and shite and jpegs of what went in the bin after JB’s Christmas party.” Jamie tried to remember to look like he believed this ( _get better and I’ll say whatever you like_ ) and to _forget_ the orgy of print media and speculation they’d indulged in the night  and day before (honestly, he’d had _sex_ which was less tiring). Claire looked lemonish.

 

“He’s got that puir soft Julius wrapped round his bony finger, free board and lodging, and you exhausting yourself over the papers – I _saw_ them, Jamie, in the bin. He’s no different.”

 

Jamie squared his shoulders. “I am, but.” Ruth was singing softly, something about _war_ and _guns_ , by the sound of it.

 

Claire balanced looking scornful with wiping jam from Nellie’s face. “He shows up and it’s like Doctor Who at Christmas. One click of his fingers and you’re out the door like Billie Piper.”

 

“Who left like eight million _years_ ago,” Maggie muttered, bored to atrophy.

 

“Da’s leaving?” asked Ruth, breaking from her military/bread game and staring between her parents in alarm. “Are we moving back to London?”

 

“No,” Claire snapped, and (automatically disentangling tomato pips and crust from Nellie’s hair) would honestly look back on that moment, for the rest of her life, as one in which she’d been more _irritated_ than angry or even worried. But then she caught the look in Jamie’s eyes.

 

 

 

On Monday morning, the Woodingdean Conference and Breakout Group Resources Centre Board of Trustees and Executive Planning Committee had a breakfast meeting in the most inhabitable bit of the kitchen. This consisted of Julius buttering eight pieces of toast, Alexander buttering nine, and Jane wondering if her husband and brother-in-law thought they put on weight by _magic_. Tosca, the house’s most disreputable hound, lay obese and glossy on the hearthrug, exhausted from a night’s energetic lovemaking with the sofa. Julius noted with some disgust that he was panting like an obscene ‘phone caller (if, indeed, people still _made_ such calls). Julius was tired because he’d been awake until four worrying about Douglas, and because Alexander (upon learning of the Labour booking) had called the Opposition woo-woo Janus-faced pinkos. Alexander was tired because Malcolm had spent half the damned night pacing around the west wing “like the second Mrs. de Winter”, a remark of which Julius disapproved and for which Jane had surreptitiously kicked her spouse. Jane was tired because Alexander had spent half the night _telling_ her that Malcolm (poor man) was on the move, and because she was going to break some unpleasant news.

 

“ – wallpaper samples, which I can pick up in London _tonight_ , and then bring back this morning.” Julius counted off another task on his fingers. “That leaves the printers, the desk arrangement, the breakout group refreshment platters, and the pot pourri for the gender-neutral accessible toilets.”

 

“Perhaps Malcolm could be deputed to by the _sodding_ – fine, the pot pourri,” Alexander suggested, grouching. Julius sent him what was designed as a freezing look.

 

“Malcolm is neither involved in, nor _aware of_ the breakout strategising day, Alexander, as you _well know_.”

 

“You can’t _not tell him_ , Julius.”

 

“Why not? He surely won’t still BE here, will he, squit? Not by then? Oh, here we go.” Alexander folded his arms as his younger brother drew himself, quivering, into a passable interpretation of a very dignified blancmange.

 

“Malcolm Tucker is a very dear friend. In this period of re-evaluation and intense _self-reflection_ –“

 

“ – makes you go blind, that,” commented Alexander, digging into his third boiled egg.

 

“ – I am _entirely willing_ to provide him with whatever _haven_ he may require. However, actually, Alexander, I think it could be _extremely detrimental_ to his _personal evolution_ – not to say _revolution_ , actually – to be sucked back into the debilitating and _unstable_ world of politics, at this stage.”

 

“Nonsense,” said Alexander, bluffly. “You lot bloody love it.”

 

“I’m not telling him. If he’s to have any chance with young James…” Alexander looked vaguely unwell.

 

“You’re not Emma bloody Woodhouse, squit. Not _everyone_ has to be paired off with some chap they knew as a – “ Jane kicked him, hard.

 

Julius pressed on. “And he may be _busy_ on Thursday. He may be _out_. He may – “ Julius tried hard to achieve a mental image of Malcolm enjoying the local amenities. Try as he might, he _could not_ superimpose the man on a rural background. “ – would you like the last croissant, Jane, dear?”

 

“Please have it,” she offered, appropriately cued. Alexander slid her a look, and she gave in. “Julius, dearest, there was a courier – a man on a motorbike brought a letter here, this morning.”

 

“ – going for my bath,” said Alexander, hastily, but Jane put a hand on his sleeve.

 

“You can’t, darling, the boiler man’s not been. Which reminds me, we need to unblock the guttering at the stables. Did you call – anyway, sorry, Julius. I put it on the side.”

 

Bewildered, Julius blinked. When he saw the thick brown envelope, marked with the crest of a London chambers, Jane felt an almost wincing sympathy.

 

 

Malcolm padded into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, stopped momentarily (he’d never met men who wore _ties_ to breakfast) and rallied. “Mornin’.” He wished he’d thought to practice his voice. “This a…” he tried hard to remember what Disneyland Baldness was _actually called_. “….project meeting?” Christ, he was tired. He’d listened to five irritated-to-recriminatory messages from his sister Sue, and the total justification with which she harangued him for not turning up had left him more enervated than when he went to bed.

 

“Yes. Do sit down, Malcolm. There’s – “ and here Jane faltered, because not only had Alexander and Julius made truly heroic inroads on the tuck-shop bunfest for eight that they each day passed off as breakfast, but for the first time since Malcolm’s arrival, Julius _wasn’t_ verbally rushing to offer Malcolm his morning monologue in the style of Ratty in _Wind in the Willows_ , substituting _eggs, Malcolm, one actually knows the hens_ and _artisan toast_ (ridiculous – village shop brick, Jane thought) for the litany of cold-ham-cold-tongue. Having opened the envelope, he’d laid several sheets of paper on the table and begun to read the covering letter. A quick glance at the top sheet confirmed Jane’s suspicions; she caught the words _settlement_ and _assets_ and her heart sank. To ignore Julius at his mother’s memorial service had been bad enough – all that piteous gazing didn’t count for much if the only person he spoke to – while she and Julius had chaperoned mourners in the other room! – was Alexander. And now, his mouth hardening into a thin line, Julius hadn’t even noticed that the last croissant was cooling.

 

Malcolm, swaying slightly from prolonged exposure to oxygen in the absence of caffeine, rasped again. “Is everything all right?”

 

Julius folded the papers. “Yes. We’re – celebrating.” He looked up at Malcolm. “Woodingdean Conference and Breakout Group Resources Centre have taken their first booking. Oliver Reeder will be bringing the Press Department, the Leader of the Opposition and the Shadow Cabinet here for an away day, to discuss future strategies.”

_Fuck_ , thought Jane. And Malcolm’s eyes gleamed.

 

 

 

 

“Oh, aye, I suppose this’ll be your last fucking visit, then, you _fat fuck_.”

 

Malcolm spared a small amount of brain to wonder if the carbohydrates were actually _already visible_. Julius had made him bacon and pancakes. It was a bit like eating a dead American, but the sugar boost was extraordinary. Jamie was currently machinating like an anguished Quasimodo around the private room, throwing small objects that were easily-dodged. He was also, as far as Malcolm could see, talking bullshit.

 

“Jamie. This is our _chance_. All of fucking Labour – the _boys_. Don’t you want – “

 

“Not like you do, Fagin in a – a – _scarf_. Oh Christ, don’t look at me, it’s the sodding pills. Fuck off and a bit further. What, are you GOING?” Malcolm had in fact only taken half a step towards the door, mainly in order to avoid standing on a biro that Jamie’d improvised as a primitive _spear_. Jamie lent on the bed, attempting to look fierce while clutching his chest. “Piss off to Baldington World of Adventures, then. Christ, I’ve been useful to you. Given you a wee bit of trainin’, got back up your reading fucking comprehension, helped you remember what _year_ it is, even – I even downloaded _News 24_ to your _fucking phone_ , I helped you prank call _Glenn Cullen_ – “

 

“You enjoyed that as much as I did! And _useful_ , jesus, Jamie, I’ve not been here because you’re some political fuckin’ guru.”

 

“I _am_ a political fucking guru! I’ve never been to prison – not _adult_ prison, Malc, jesus – I’ve never been fucking _sacked_ , I’m the only shit-handed liar that Goolding didn’t want to burrow under a rock to find, and if I’d _been there_ I’d have made sure _you_ weren’t found either. Carrying a fucking – if you weren’t so old and blind you widnae have _needed_ the numbers written so large even a leaky fucking ballsack from the press you could see. Compared to you, aye, I’m a god right now.”

 

He saw Malcolm hesitate. “All right. You’d be useful. So come with us.”

 

“Ah, fuck off. M’in hospital.”

 

“You’ll be _out_ by Thursday, at least if you stop _smoking out the fucking window_ – jesus, Jamie, it’s not _Taggart_ stuff, it stinks like your nan’s kitchen and a seagull’s shat in your hair – NOT the scarf, you little – ” An interlude of vigorous, Kleenex-based rubbing. “You’d enjoy it. Victimising Olly Reeder. Pissing in Dan Miller’s tea.”

 

“S’not like the auld days. I’ve got a mad bitch of a wife and three weans.” Malcolm gave Jamie a very eloquent look, at this, designed to recall those days in which Jamie’d had a mad wife and two weans, but had still made it his life’s mission to juggle ammonia with shoving his tongue down Malcolm’s throat. Jamie squinted up at him. “And she’s got your number, prick.”

 

It wasn’t so much that Malcolm’s heart sank as that all the suspensory ligaments and wee veins and arteries and tubes (working together in gentle persuasion to keep the coffee-and-bile rust-jam wincing and slouching round his body) just sagged. If Jamie hadn’t been too far gone in fury, he might have felt a little guilty.

 

“I would never help her take your kids.”

 

“Och, no, that was pure bullshit,” Jamie conceded, sounding oddly cheerful. “But she’s spotted you. Having a dry hump on my vast political acumen before you can drag your leaky blue balls back to London for a proper go on something wet.”  Malcolm gesticulated, baffled, at various unseen forces. Jamie pressed on. “I’m your political fleshlight.”

 

“Is this the morphine speaking?”

 

“No. Wee Jacky in the cardio ward smuggled in some porn.”

 

“Christ.” Malcolm looked him over. “Get back in bed.”

 

Jamie’s eyes appraised him, somewhat wildly. “Did that turn you on?”

 

“No,” Malcolm insisted, although it was so long since he’d felt the touch (scrape, bite, total disrespect for bruising of) human flesh that yes, probably, it did a bit (although all his fantasies, as Jamie could have correctly diagnosed and then whooped about for days, ran less towards using Jamie as any sort of _orifice_ than Jamie fucking his mind out, forever, preferably lit by a pyre of treacherous MPs).

“Get in. It’s not an _order_ ,” he specified, as Jamie visibly assessed the potential for spectacular rebellion. “But just… get some _rest_.”

 

“Listening to you is like watching a fucking ashtray,” Jamie announced, but actually accepted a hand on his elbow, easing him in. Malcolm perched on the side of the bed, minimising the preparatory checks for crisps or ash or _fucking Smarties_ , and contemplated the still-discoloured face staring up at his own. Less than a week post-admission, Jamie had still grown a terrorist scruff that was less a beard than a human tribute to Dennis the Menace’s Gnasher. In combination with the bruises, he looked like a Hallowe’en drawing. All this should have made it less tempting to kiss him. All his freckles were fading and, Malcolm had noticed (even if Jamie hadn’t), the one bit of his hairline receding in a child’s-drawing triangle was, where it was still bothering to grow, grey.

 

“This isn’t about getting me a job.” He let Jamie get five seconds into his monologue about how that was a good thing because Malcolm’s career was now the political equivalent of the Northern Line, and then kissed him. This was very nearly an overplayed hand, because even if Jamie was bruised and balding and diabolically scratchy on Malcolm’s paper-thin impression of skin, he kissed as if cataloguing all the other things his tongue could do, all the hot, wet applications it might have to _other_ parts of Malcolm’s sex-starved body, and suddenly Malcolm was being _held down_ by somebody still technically _underneath_ him.

 

“ – doing this in a hospital – NOT doing this in a _hospital_ , get off.”

 

“You kissed me.”

 

“You’re not out til Thursday.”

 

“Pretend it’s Thursday. C’mon, Malc – there's no fucking _catheter_ now.” It was the worst invitation to sex Malcolm had ever heard, but since the second kiss had even been an improvement on the first, and since the feel of Jamie, hard and hot and _wanting_ against him through inadequate sheets (because the sheets weren’t _designed_ to conceal the erections of – _fuck_ , Jamie was _stroking his arse_ ) was making him want to black out the door and _bend over_ , Malcolm almost took it.

 

“No – look _, sweetheart_.” Jamie went still, although whether from emotion or incredulity was hard to say. Malcolm rested on his wrists, hard. “I want you with me. Not as a _henchman_ – all right, yes, as a fucking henchman, because if I _did_ employ someone else, there’d be a pile of _disturbed fucking earth_ in Epsom Forest, wouldn’t there?”

 

“Wouldn’t get caught. You employed _Ed_ , you fucking judas, didn’t you?”

 

For a moment, Malcolm literally couldn’t remember. “The balding gonk? Jamie, he was standard-issue. He left in week three after he caught Ruiradh stirring his tea with a pencil.”

 

“Wi’ a pencil?” Jamie’s face looked like a scorecard for bafflement.

 

“He’d pissed on the pencil. Anyway. Just come wi’ us. D’you honestly _want_ to stay here, for the rest of your life? There’ve been _lessons learned_ ,” Malcolm purred, and never had the purr in his voice been so velvet or so coaxing. He stretched himself above Jamie like a luxuriating cat (as opposed to sphinx hairless horrorshow) and dipped to kiss his jaw. He felt, rather than heard, the hitch in Jamie’s chest.

 

“I – I _can’t_ , Malc.” He hugged him, suddenly, but it did nothing to assuage the sensation of falling, forwards, into something open where there shouldn’t have been any space. “It’s the weans.”

 

“ – they were born in London,” Malcolm said, numb. “Maggie and Ruth, they were born there.”

 

“They live here. And Ruthie – she asked _yesterday_. Is da leaving? Can you imagine – “ Malcolm sat up, dizzily. He’d seen a poster once – well, several times, every time it had been expedient to commandeer Olly Reeder’s front room for a bit of political reconnaissance, surveillance and amateur vandalism. It was, he knew, a popular design, one you could doubtless buy on wee mugs and cards and incontinence pads, of first-gen Irish labourers sitting ten thousand miles up on a skyscraper crane, eating their dizzying lunch. All Malcolm had ever done about the image was shout a bit and let Wee Tadhg, the first Press Officer with a degree, accuse Olly of fascistically fetishising the immigrant condition (wee Tadhg was now in the same American think-tank as Helen “Bellatrix Lestrange” Hatley, god have mercy). Now he thought he had an inkling of how those fuckers _felt_.

 

He, of course, would have been glad to hear _his_ da was leaving. But then he had an image of Jamie and the bairns – no Nellie, of course – on the lawn at Chequers, that one summer Sunday. Or Jamie at the bairns’ Nativity, drowning the sound on his “borrowed” camcorder with sobs. Or Jamie, mad-haired and talking as if underwater, insisting yet again that Malc look at the picture of newborn Ruth and her toddler sister in their pyjamas, even as he slid down the wall of the office and fell asleep with his head in the wastebasket. And then Jamie, the last time, slouching towards Bethlehem or possibly HR, scattering not indignant desert birds but wary, hopeful administrators, who stared after him in wonder as he bypassed Malcolm and sort of “cleared” his desk.

 

“I can imagine being told you’re leaving,” Malcolm said, so fucking sad and _rough_ that Jamie nearly reached for him: but then a phone rang. Jamie actually _squeaked_ , peering in horror through the window for rogue nurses as he dived in pursuit of a phone that – yes, Malcolm confirmed, it was _actually_ _playing_ Disney.

 

“Maggie’s favourite song, she chose it fucking _years_ – pet? _What_? Shit.” He held the phone away from his head. “She’s outside the ward. Go and get her, for _god’s_ sake.”

 

 

 

Adam had never seen someone look simultaneously haggard and fatter than three days ago. But Fergus, after sulking soggily through a briefing and telling an unconvincing lie about why he’d been unable to return Adam’s texts (he’d _tried_ implying that he and Niamh were having passionate, baby-building sex due to the fire in his ever-ready man-loins, but the one time Niamh had been three days late, Fergus had had a panic attack in Pret A Manger, and Adam had helped him _draft_ the speech persuading Niamh it’d be better to start Project Sprogging _after_ the General Election), had spent the morning alternately munching on shortbread like he’d have preferred arsenic, and gazing at Adam with cow-like eyes of woe. When Adam had been irritated into asking whether Fergus was on his period, Fergus had turned snotty and ripped into a report which, _he was sure_ , Adam had not spent _anything like_ the necessary time on. Adam was confused but oblivious as to _why_ Fergus (who generally went through the run-up to deadlines with the same flappy-handed hysteria that he did _actual running_ ) was obsessing so sneerily and blotchily (shortbread now in either cheek) about the _timeframe_ of his report and how he’d managed to _fit it in_. And, presumably, confessing that he’d written it while easing out the comedown from Friday, but before Sumrah and Nick had whatsapped him suggesting a hugely enjoyable round two. That had lasted _most of_ Sunday. Was it the row about Niamh and her bigotry at the party, and yes, that ill-advised attempt to suggest Fergus was hampered by a symbolic fear of black cock? Adam’s memory of that portion of the evening was finite, not to mention hazy – partly because he’d been pissed and partly because the bit with the blowjob (and then the other blowjob) and then the threesome had been _so much better_. And besides, amidst the sliding mental polaroids of rutting bodies and digs about Fergus’s sexual inhibitions, he remembered, _with clarity_ , saying a perfectly amiable goodbye to Fergus, swapping witticisms about Deadkidmobile (their private name for _TravelFirst_ ). Fergus, naturally, remembered this as an out-of-body experience in which his jaw hung slackly and a few words took pity on him and obligingly slid down his tongue.

 

It was now half-an-hour since Fergus’s last shit fit. Adam had just got a Whatsapp from Nick, the skinnier, artier of his two recent bedmates, suggesting an evening in with Ketel One and an anal lock. Adam glanced through the glass partition at the Deputy Leader, and weighed guilt against the desire to fuck a hipster through the floor.

_Difficult, difficult, Lib Dem difficult._

 

Fergus slumped back in his chair, rubbed a hand through his sub-Becker, increasingly sub-standard allocation of hair, and loosened his tie. He did, as Adam had observed, look like a fucking fat baby when he sulked, but there was something so _mournful_ , so betrayed, so pathetically fucking _crumpled_ as he gazed out at the open-plan and _visibly wondered_ if he could get anyone to bring him a Mars Bar. Adam didn’t exactly give in to a good angel on his shoulder, but he did temporarily silence the sex devil telling him loudly that he was a self-sabotaging, carnally-doomed twat. Nick, vodka and anal lock were all rejected. Squaring his shoulders, and forcing himself into his best Advisory Smile, Adam picked up two squares of card and padded through to the office.

 

Fergus was still staring gloomily into confectionery-free space.

 

“So…” said Adam, aiming for competent adult and ending up as over-bright careworker, “Ben Swain’s book launch. Should be fun, yeah?” Fergus found a new way to look sulky. “Pennying Olly Reeder, rattling his twigs.” Fergus grunted that he supposed so. Adam suppressed the urge to hit him on the back of the head, and dropped the invitations onto the desk. “C’mon. I bet there’s a buffet.

 

Fergus looked like a cow in a blender.

 

 

 

 

Malcolm and Jamie sat looking at the latter’s eldest daughter like she was a tearful bundle of dynamite. Alternating between defiance and upset, Maggie’s explanations rested heavily on _pigging Maths_ and _stupit Teresa Mary_ in Mrs. O’Donoghue’s class, but the way she nestled into her father’s shoulder made it increasingly clear _why_ she’d come. “I didnae _want_ to go on the fucking trip anyway,” she insisted, totally ignoring her father’s lecture on _fucking absconding_ just as she ignored his poorly-disguised pride at her skulduggery. Malcolm was too busy being enthralled by the combination of winsome blonde curls with Jamie’s bullish blue eyes: every time she jutted her jaw and scowled, he wanted to laugh until he wheezed. As soon as Jamie tried to reference _truancy_ , she started a detailed interrogation regarding the smell of (as she put it) _Life on Mars pub scene_ , and Malcolm _really_ had to look away. It all reminded him very vividly of Jamie, twenty, doorstepping his first recalcitrant MP. For a second, he was back on the news desk with him – the night desk, sometimes, watching Jamie swagger in with a bag of change, ready to dole out to the endless procession of half-brothers, halfwits, best mates and wee lasses so that they could find a phonebox and ring in, should any aggro occur. _If at first ye din succeed, in wi’ the boot an’ the heid_ , Jamie chanted, gleefully following hunches and following Malcolm. For the first time, Malcolm found himself thinking that they need never have left. And then maybe he’d have seen Mags more than once in the past two years.

 

“I suppose – your mam’s on a course, isn’t she? Did ye go to registration? Ach, well, it’ll all be fine, they willnae _notice_ , you might as well stop here.” Fucking _Micawber_ , thought Malcolm, not unaffectionately. “We can call it work experience, eh? Doctor. Nurse. Political colossus.” Giggling, Maggie started showing him the doodles in her planner. “What lessons have you?”

 

“Fuckin’ _hockey_. And Maths.” Her stomach was rumbling piteously. “They make us eat _liver_ , da.” Malcolm refrained from pointing out that it was not yet ten a.m., so probably Mags wasn’t actually being offered liver _yet_. Jamie melted.

 

“Malc,” he wheedled, in a near-identical tone. “Can ye no get her some chips, or something, from the café?”

 

“ – or, like, a bacon roll?” Maggie all but _bounced_ , and the planner slid from her lap.

 

“Aye, or a bacon r – _fuck_.” Jamie’s phone had started to screech _Everlasting Love_ (Malcolm, fascinated, was tempted to dial Jamie’s phone and find out what _his_ ringtone was), and father and daughter exchanged looks of identical horror. Malcolm, meanwhile, was frowning down at the planner, which had landed timetable-up. “I thought your mam was on a _course_ today, Mags, you –“

“This _afternoon_ she is,” Maggie mumbled, scuffing the floor.

 

“She works at the _fuckin’ school_?”

 

“PA to the Head. I _know_ , I thought they widnae _tell_ her, if she was – oh, fuck it.” He answered. “No, pet, aye, she’s here. No – oh… only a few seconds. Aye. No. Obviously. I will. _Appalling_. Straight back, aye. A taxi? Och, no fuckin’ need, Malc – whoops sorry signal’s shit see you in a minute. _Fuck_ ,” he said again, hanging up. “Jesus.” Maggie’s face was crumpling. “Ah, pet, don’t, it’s all right. I’m sorry. Come here, sweetheart.”

  
“I just wanted to fucking _see you_ ,” Maggie sobbed. “It’s _horrible_. I hate everything.” He looked pleadingly at Malcolm over Maggie’s bony shoulder. Exhaling, Malcolm picked up his keys. And Maggie’s planner.

 

 

 

She was silent most of the way to school, only venturing a few caustic comments when the wrought-iron gates came into view. Malcolm pulled into the carpark, then dropped the planner onto her lap, timetable-up. “Maths and _hockey_ , Mags? Disnae look like it.”

 

Maggie sniffed and rubbed her eyes on her sleeve. “You always _liked_ Art.”

 

“I was wee.”

 

“Give over, I saw the drawings.” He peered through the windscreen at the main block. The offices were bound to be there; he reckoned they had about five minutes before Claire, or someone  _in league_ with her, spotted them and barrelled out of the doors. “Your da’s gonnae be _okay_ , Mags, he’s not about to…” there wasn’t an adequate syllable.

 

“It’s not just _da_. It’s Teresa Mary.”

 

“Is she bullying you?” The question came about five hundred times too quickly (all in all,  though, considering the lion-slash-Audi trying to fight its way out of his _chest_ every time he _looked_ at Jamie's daughter, Malcolm thought he’d done fairly fucking well to omit the subclause about how if the wee skank with too many names had even _thought_ of upsetting her, tip him the wink and Malcolm would _run her down_ ).

 

Maggie gave a malevolent laugh, combined with scornful twitchings of the face, designed to indicate (as best a tearstained and resolutely short twelve-year-old could) that Teresa Mary _wished_.

 

“Teresa’s mum goes to _Zumba_ with mam. They’re, like, bezzos. Best mates,” she added kindly, for (as Malcolm reflected) the benefit of the terminally senile and incontinently old. “But not like you and da.”

 

Malcolm hadn’t blushed for _thirty fucking years_. He pretended to be adjusting the wing mirror.

 

Maggie plunged on. “And mam _rang_ Teresa’s mum last night. And then _this morning_ , Teresa’s mum turns up in her _stupit_ SUV because Teresa’s wee sister _Chastity_ ,” she rolled her eyes, “goes to school wi’ Ruth, and her mum’s said she’ll take us all, ‘cept not Nellie because Nellie ate her car freshener and was sick in her upholstery once, ‘cept she didn’t _say_ that but we _all know that’s why_ and anyway Nellie’s away tae nursery wi’ one of _her_ wee friends’ mums. And _then_ , Teresa Mary asks us, _in front of Ruthie_ , in the car, like, if da’s no coming home again. If he’s gonnae move out and get a divorce.”

 

Malcolm felt his throat screwing shut, like the end of all air, forever. “Pet – “ he tried, but no sound came out. Maggie braced both her hands on the glove box.

 

“I just think it was _really shit_ of her to ask _in front of Ruth_. She didn’t think how Ruthie might _feel_ , did she?” Her arms were shaking, her thin shoulders squared beneath the blazer. “She’s only wee. She’s too wee not to be upset about it.”

 

“Darlin’ – your da _loves_ you. More than anything in the world, you and the girls.”

 

Maggie was pressing her lips together so hard that the next sob escaped like a squeak. Malcolm rummaged hastily for a tissue.

 

“I hate it when he’s sad. When he thinks we’re not awake, but.” she said, and her voice was suddenly very little. Malcolm felt something like frozen nuclear waste dripping slowly down his spine. “He goes down the garden. Smoking. Where he thinks we cannae see or hear. When everyone’s asleep. Except,” and her voice rose like a fountain even as her face crumpled and even as, for the first time, Malcolm realised _exactly_ what he was dealing with, “my room’s over the _back_ , so I _hear_.”

 

“It’ll all be all right,” Malcolm gasped, promising recklessly as she started to cry in earnest, face against his chest. “Sweetheart. Pet, I’ll sort it. Dinnae – _whisht_ , sweetheart, I promise, I’ll sort it. He willnae go _away_. I promise. Whatever – you’ll _always_ have your da.”

 

“He might go, like _you_ did,” Maggie croaked, very smudged and very crumpled, peering with red, tear-stained face from the damp front of Malcolm’s shirt.

 

“Neither of us is gonnae – _fuck_. Hush, darlin’, I think your mum’s – “ Malcolm’s soft expletive was covered by Maggie’s rather louder one, as Claire clattered down the school path, blonde hair flying, face twisted white with fear and anger. Malcolm saw another one behind her, lentil-eating type, probably a _school counsellor_ or _liaison officer_ , and as soon as Maggie had ducked out the car with a quick smile and a sudden squeeze of solidarity, he revved it fast and drove out of the gates at a zoom, exactly like the reckless, heartless, home-breaking Machiavel he suddenly felt himself to be.

 

 

 

Olly Reeder was hiding in his office. He’d found fourteen different ways to non-subtly subtly ask Sam how Malcolm was doing, each met with the same sweet, inscrutable cold-cocking as the last. This was scarcely more comfort than the behaviour, that morning, of the tech-fucking malcontents ostensibly known as “his” Press Team. Told yesterday evening that Thursday would see them strategising Dan Miller’s electoral victory in the jewel of East Sussex, the Caledonian Mafia had suddenly fallen prey to a variety of family tragedies, religious observances, minor surgeries and dumb insolences. Then, shortly after breakfast, everything had changed. Eamonn’s rash had been rescheduled; Arran had decided he didn’t like his granny after all, and Frankie just laughed worryingly, slapped Olly’s back with a force that could have induced osteoporosis, and announced he widnae miss it for the fucking _world_ , boss.

 

None of the Press Team had _ever_ called him boss, before.

 

 

 

Sam, surreptitiously loo-skiving, re-read Malcolm’s message and smiled. A day at Chateau Julius certainly _would_ be delightful, but this didn’t mean she could let him off the hook. She hit speed-dial 2 on her phone.

 

“Sam? Is it full communism and nudity in Sloane Square?”

 

“It’s call your – jesus, you sound _awful_. Have you been c – “

 

“Finish that sentence and I’ll cancel your pension,” the voice rasped. She heard him wheeze. “What is it, pet?"

 

She frowned at the phone. "Are you driving? I can hear - "

 

"No. Cars. Pulled off. Had a bit of a shite morning... twat Prince of Bel Air hasnae cancelled Thursday?”

 

“No. You’ve still got plenty of time.”

 

“For what?”

 

“Calling your sister. Malcolm. I feel like the London branch of the Tucker Family Counselling Unit. _Call her_. She’s been expecting you up there for days. Do you _have_ to stay in Brighton? I don’t mean _on Thursday_ , I mean… today. Tuesday. Wednesday. Returning at 18.47 on Wednesday eve.”

 

“Eighteen forty…. that sounds suspiciously like a fuckin’ timetable.”

 

“Your tickets will be waiting for you at Brighton station,” she cooed. “Now, I must go. I’ve got a book launch to go to."

 

 

  
"I don't see _why_ I have to go to this bloody launch. I haven't read the book, I'm not _going_ to read the book, I already _know_ the book is pabulum created for a dopey-hearted political elite who fondly imagine we can rescue the benighted economy through flowers and kittens and organic hand-looms for Tower Hamlets. Christ." 

 

"Peter, you have to go to this book launch in the spirit of inter-party unity and cheerful collaboration. And because I _know_ that Pinky and Perky will be there trying to tongue the arse of Dan Miller." She dropped her watch and earrings onto the counter, and (more carefully) her glasses. "That _was_ a hint, by the way."

 

"Y-yes, but - " turning rather too rapidly to follow her, Peter found himself falling over what seemed like five of his own feet. 

 

"Is the curtain drawn? Good. Now. You are going to this book launch in order to both laud and discredit this silly little book, _and_ to make certain that for-god's-sake Fergus has no opportunity to broker a deal with Desperate Dan. Which will probably mean keeping a closer eye on _Kenyon_ than Williams, there's no point ignoring the organ-grinder for the sake of the monkey. On the desk, please." 

 

Peter felt a dim memory of the one sexual harassment seminar he'd been forced to attend, as a young _ish_ lawyer, back in 1975. As one of a group of twelve, he'd been informed of the perils and righteousness of the new legislation, and taken a pretty secretary out to lunch immediately afterwards. She'd been a pretty Welsh virgin with a mind full of Jilly Cooper novels, and he'd seduced her, with great audacity, on the senior partner's desk. And now the Prime Minister was ordering him into the very same position.

 

"Good." She purred. "Now, Peter, we have exactly half an hour before you need to leave, and I've had a bitch of a day. If you can reduce the negotiations regarding the TFL strikes to a dim and improbable memory, I'll make sure to reciprocate. _After_ the launch."

 

Thirty-two minutes later, the Deputy Prime Minister of Great Britain, walking with slightly unsteady gait, caught a taxi. He wouldn't be the first to arrive at Ben Swain's launch - that had been Julius, over-punctual to a fault, but he wouldn't be the last. One taxi followed Peter's, inexorably, through Whitehall. And inside was Julius Nicholson's husband.


	14. Look At Your Luck, At The Girl You Don't Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’re looking utterly seamless  
> Like an actor playing a genius  
> Look at you  
> Look at your luck  
> At the girl you don’t love  
> And the wife you don’t fuck  
> Look at you  
> Look at what you’ve bought  
> With all that hard, hard work
> 
> \--- The Indelicates, "Your Money". 
> 
>  
> 
> Lovers, wives, cities and schools.

Of the seventy-five copies gifted to the seventy-five guests at Ben Swain’s second book launch, forty-three were employed as coasters or platters (Julius’s, predictably, now bore a maize-based snack).

 

Three had been returned to the publishers’ stand, privately inscribed with encouraging or scurrilous messages. Five had been annotated by vaguely diligent journalists, and one (Angela Heaney’s) had been symbolically placed in the ladies’ loo, the author’s acknowledgments already well down the cistern and other pages wedged invitingly above the roll-holder. Two more copies were in the men’s loo, where they had been used to facilitate the consumption of illegal substances.

 

A mere ten copies remained clean and unbesmirched, because they had been given to quite junior people who genuinely believed Ben might become Prime Minister (shortly after regaining consciousness, Jamie had vowed to Malcolm that he would hire a hitman should that ever become the case. Malcolm, knowing Jamie had one in his extended family, agreed). Glenn Cullen was also cleanly and carefully retaining his, because he wanted to put it on Ebay after the inevitable sex scandal. Adam had kept his because he was planning it as a contemptuous Christmas present for Fergus’s wife. The publishing intern whom Ben shagged in Chapter Thirteen (as I’ve mentioned) and who, poor creature, was in the early and volatile stages of unwanted impregnation, was debating whether to use her copy (“best wishes”, the cunt) as sickbag or missile.

 

Seven more remained pristine because their recipients had remained at home. One book had just been placed in Peter Mannion’s vast and unimpressed hand. The cover art, maroon splodges and dangerous reds, seemed like a tribute to the mottled and hectic ruddiness of Mannion’s countenance. Sam, whose copy had proved a useful dais for a mini-yorkshire pudding and a halloumi-on-ritz, noticed this look, diagnosed it, and stood in elegant silence as her eyebrows crossed her hairline. She almost wished she hadn’t banished Malcolm to the motherland.

 

One copy alone awaited its rightful owner. That owner lurked in the foyer, feeling as awkward as Olly Reeder, who had found his ex-girlfriend giggling with his ex-girlfriend, and who had subsequently been asked by the Tory ex-girlfriend how Helen Hatley was getting on in her American thinktank. Olly would spend the next hour sweatily and vainly decoding this, while his journalist ex mimed writing in an invisible notebook, and Emma sniggered tipsily into her Pinot. His distraction infuriated Adam, who (to Fergus’s buffet-bulldozing sulk/distress) bore down upon Reeder with the sandwiches which Fergus had been hoping to mainline, and talked to him seriously in a corner. Fergus supposed that meant they were shagging, even though _historically_ Adam had always planned to make Olly into dim sum as soon as the political opportunity arose. Fergus spilt some dim sum down his shirt.

 

 

At first, Peter didn’t mind being cornered by Julius (who’d been there far too early and accordingly endured three misuses of his title and four hirsutism-based gags): it was better than enduring Terri’s fishbowl eyes of lust as she deliberated between him and the buffet.

 

Julius was also the last man on earth to whom any kind of illicit sex would ever occur (in this, Peter was half-wrong – Julius was perfectly au fait with the Mary situation, thanks to Malcolm, and had followed Sam’s gaze to the beetroot skin, creased shirt, and the unusual post-coital sway. He’d banked them all as collateral, because Julius was less myopic and less harmless than people thought).

 

Peter was more bothered by the basics. Mary’d reknotted his tie much too forcefully (once she’d let him take it out of his mouth) and the fabric was digging into (he could no longer ignore them) his lower jowl. Unfortunately, Julius’s salutations only tightened the noose. He was congratulating Peter on the success of TravelFirst, delighted that those _appalling_ deathtrap J3354s were off the road (trust the bastard to know the code, Peter winced, wrenching at Mary’s Satanic variation on the Windsor) and attempting to ascertain whether Tina had thought any more about the converted barn in Surrey. As Julius descanted on the generosity of Nicholas Amwar and the true _iniquity_ of the Horsham bus company in allowing those tin hearses to transport _young people and the community_ , Peter nodded, knowing perfectly well that at least half a dozen tin hearses still did, albeit beneath an eco-friendly paint job and window stickers with a logo of nine different ethnicites commuting hand-in-hand. Peter was fonder of Julius than of almost anyone else in the room – he hadn’t been monstrous to bunk with at Chatham House, and had it been Julius, not Phil, hurtling towards the kitchen muttering “cockpiss” at a tie full of Merlot, Peter would have sympathised – not least because Julius could spell Jermyn Street and didn’t dress like Gene Hunt’s fluffer. But with Mary’s bitemark blazing away on his shoulder, and the reminder of the huge political lie he’d told shining out of Julius’s big fat face – because of course the bastard _lived_ near the crash site, Woodingdean, probably built by artisan slaves – the boiling guilt made Peter entirely and unforgivably glad when Julius was distracted by seeing the only man he’d ever loved materialise awkwardly before him.

 

After the agony of discovering that Douglas was not in America, there had been the pickaxe-on- ribs sensation of divorce papers sliding from an envelope. Later, in London, the morbid, gelatinous sadness of knowing that somewhere Douglas breathed the same lead-poisoned air, travelled the same tubes, and continued to show insufficient regard for the heft of a proper sandwich (although, thought Julius, tears swimming into his vision, had there not been a time when Douglas had _tried_ to show it…!). No such had pain, broiling or otherwise, was adequate for this.

 

Douglas was wearing a suit Julius had never seen, and yet the walls of the building stubbornly endured. His best suit (his wedding suit) was at home in his own half of Julius’s wardrobe. Douglas had grown his hair slightly, a fact which took nail-scissors to Julius’s nerves. He was holding the last clean copy of Ben Swain’s crapulous opus.

 

Manners, decency, publicity and the terrible things they’d said to each other precluded Julius taking even a step towards him. So did the silences. Douglas had couriered him their divorce papers and refused to converse at his mother’s memorial. And now he had the nerve to turn up at a boring party without being ugly or haggard or _chatty_.

 

In Douglas’s defence, he had intended to begin an actual conversation. He spoke ten languages and while English was a good and obvious choice, it was unfortunate that the words he opened with were “You’re not at Woodingdean?” but all the blood was bubbling through his heart and his tongue was on fire, and even if he’d just said _hello_ Julius would have looked at him as if he were embodied cruelty. It was still more unfortunate that Julius responded with a haughty “The papers reached me, thank you” as if channelling Catherine of Aragon when humiliated by Henry VIII. As Douglas was small, blond and thinner than usual, the analogy was an unsuccessful one, and if Julius had been operating in any other mode than that of outraged dowager tragedy queen, he might have noticed that Douglas looked less shamed and hurt than outraged. In fact, he began a baffled, broken-off sentence of inquiry re: Malcolm Tucker and the relative blackness of pots and kettles, before – in a gesture which recalled certain painful domestic scenes – throwing up his hands and stalking towards the alcohol. Julius was left shaking with moral superiority. Peter had dissolved into the wallpaper.

 

The alcohol on the buffet had already run out, and anyone of note was congregating at the bar, where Douglas spotted several people clearly preparing themselves to ask why he wasn’t in Washington. He ducked into the kitchen, where a tallish man with a quantity of drying and ill-considered blond hair was pouring white wine onto red wine and thus spreading a pinkish, coagulated stain from his eighties tie to the worst of his shirt.

 

“Salt,” said Douglas, and then, because the creature was clearly too clumsy or too stupid to understand, began to go through the cupboards, eventually handing over a large red carton that Phil more or less upturned on his shoe. Douglas made a joke about Colombia (which eluded Phil), but as Douglas assumed responsibility for the salvaging of his tie, some sort of encrusted gear began to shift into life and Phil started to go on and on about Mannion.

 

“Christ,” Emma yawned, passing through in search of a glass. She wanted hydration for Ben Swain’s intern, who was retching shakily in the loo, while Angela (who had been all but fingerbanging Emma when the poor bitch stumbled in. The former – sex not bitch – had been  a sudden, blissful return to Emma’s schooldays, all of which she wanted to resume as soon as they were not in a toilet stall and, preferably, between Emma’s White Company sheets) gave competent advice about abortion clinics and tried not to look like she memorising the girl’s claims. For an astonishing second, it almost seemed like Phil’d bagged an attractive man through his recitation of Mannion’s charms, but then she registered Julius Nicholson’s ex, winced a glance of sympathy, and left again. Douglas had mostly avoided mental liquidation by wondering what hairdresser could be persuaded to do _that_ to Phil’s fringe, but then full concentration was his. Phil, this post-eighties automaton, was insisting with uncharacteristically specificity that Mannion was rapidly becoming the power behind Mary Drake’s throne.

 

It was not really conceivable. Not really. Stuffed-up lower-second bottom-feeders who never ruled the JCR did not provide accurate barometers of political influence, but when Douglas glanced past him, he saw Mannion, out of the wallpaper, holding court about foreign policy in a manner that ought to have been reserved for the PM rather than her paunchy D. The knot that had been in his stomach more or less since his meeting with his handler (Douglas had attained sufficient seniority that his handler was basically everybody’s handler) tightened and irritated. Mary had been placed – and oh, with what meticulous care Douglas and his fellow higher beings had placed her – as Leader and then Prime Minister to accomplish detailed and difficult international work, not to shag a flappy-tied, paunchy misanthrope whose emission of racist malapropisms was impeded only by mouthfuls of stilton and port. A man who thought he stood for _Britain_ , when everything important about Britain was conducted in half-a-dozen neutral Zone 1 basements, typically by people whose first language was something complicated, and who occasionally flew to meet people from other neutral basements in equally beautiful international cities (but who seldom saw these cities because the important things happened in strange cafes and the occasional petrol station). If these people, these British people who actually determined Britain, were very good, eventually they were made ambassadors and enable to run and safeguard things in ways that even the screenwriters of TV thrillers would find outlandish. At heights from which national governments looked like ants. Douglas was naturally bitter on this subject, having ascended to the possibility of ambassador; but more of his distress came from the fact that _normally_ , when a UK spy began to behave erratically, the person with whom he checked this _was Mary_.

 

“Well, she probably wants in, doesn’t she?” Phil was speculating. “Ride on the Manniotron. The big blue pole. It’s his natural charisma, let’s face it, he’s the quintessentially – “ Unable to bear more drivel of this kind, or the highly sublimating and indicative way in which Phil was now fisting his own tie,

 

Douglas mentioned that he’d always seen Mary as a Roedean dyke, and pushed past him to an unopened bottle of wine.

 

A brief exchange of phallic insults occurred just as he was pouring himself a glass. He turned round to see a youngish (Douglas thought of himself as youngish- _ish_ , and this chap – despite the hair – might be his junior) chap, standard issue liberal hackdog, or possibly ministry-of-advice gimp, with distinctly non-issue eyes and arse, sparing some satisfaction from what was obviously a toxic bad mood to stare smugly after the departing Phil.

 

“You seem practiced at making him disappear.”

 

Adam snorted. “Yeah, shame it’s my one trick. Is that – “

 

“ – pigs’ piss, but chilled. Here. Have you read it?”

 

And now he smiled. “Has _Ben_ even read it?”

 

Adam had made his escape because Niamh had arrived on Dan Miller’s arm, hideously channelling a Broadway faghag, and he wanted to go Grand Theft Auto on the whole fucking façade. He had come to the kitchen in order to have a little sulk, and if Julius Nicholson’s ex-husband was there practising a little kitchen-equivalent cottaging well, fine by him. After all, and not that Fergus – pigging away as if he genuinely wanted the department of sad-sacks and temporary leadership of the Junior Crapheads to be the summit of his career – deserved it, he’d just made arrangements with Olly that had probably saved the political future of the progressive world.

 

Fergus had been sulking for _ages_ now, and Adam didn’t know why, and although he loved Fergus with the quotidian inevitability that parks continents behind your sternum whenever you least need them, he hadn’t had sex for _millennia_ (days) and Fergus’s wife was the devil.

 

Adam had reckoned all this behind his eyes with what he thought was the subtlety of Sir Humphrey rebuilt for Google Chrome, but given that Douglas was a spy, Adam might as well have placed an advert in the _Times_. Because other people’s problems always seem simpler, and because the love affairs of one’s juniors always seem endearing, Douglas decided to combine restorative rebound-sex with kind romantic advice. He had just leaned forward to deliver the first part of a moving narrative about _not_ letting the love of your life betray you cruelly, stifle your dreams and _then_ use their bovine brother as an intermediary to prevent you rushing to their aid. He was just about to thus counsel Adam thus when Julius walked in.

 

Some minutes previously, Peter had re-emerged from the wallpaper when it looked as if Teri might attempt to join him there, and – because he had moments of decency, liver-spotted and cheeseboard-flecked though they might be – when the lonely monolith of Julius had drawn Ben from buffet to interrogate Julius over whether the latter had enjoyed his crapular ghost-written tome or not. Julius, either in a fugue state or complex regression to the Chatham House days, had begun croaking miserably about how Douglas hadn’t even, didn’t, wasn’t – all of which reminded Peter horribly of Tina immediately after news of his lover’s pregnancy had broken. Her elbows had been similarly shaky.

 

There was absolutely noone else to come to Julius’s aid; the depleted litter of Scots who hung on in obscure corners of the Opposition had materialised, as one, in the last fifteen minutes, Banquo’s Ghost forever in their metaphorical midst, and were were having none of it. What with the liver spots, stilton flecks and port-wine stains in the moral regions and realm where his heart should have been, Peter wasn’t altogether fussed whether the poor old ponce reobtained his Etonian pash of a husband, but it had occurred to him that _Mary_ cared. When she wasn’t making him perform unmentionable acts or applying her stiletto to his spine; in the very rare off-moments between official business and its equally tiring alternative; she had opined, doing up her bra again, that it was such a _shame_ about Douglas and Julius. It was the nearest he’d ever heard her come to a warm sentiment. When not actually coming.

Mentally daubing his Spanish-turned cloak across a filthy Tudor puddle, Peter flushed and preened and primed himself to do a noble act.

 

He told Julius to go and talk to his husband.

 

He discoursed at length on how miserable Douglas looked. He expanded upon every small inclination of Julius to notice shadows beneath eyes and hollowed cheeks. He expanded, too, upon Mary’s occasional vague commiserations, making them include a fictitious dinner of tears in the soup. At this, Julius gave him a very odd look, but gloomed away: insensible of the fact that he’d eluded Ben Swain, _Auteur_ ; oblivious to the loving glances passing between Daniel Miller and a vicious, bibulous Boden blonde who’d arrived with a Lib Dem; blind to the unkind impression that Nick Hanway was doing of him, ventriloquist-style, with finger food (including, but not limited to, a devilled egg _sans_ filling and one chipolata); sensible only of the hope that perhaps he would once again taste of the breakfast buffet at La Quisiana with Douglas smiling at him across a bowl of _cornetti_. He swept into the kitchen a Julius reborn. And found Douglas deep in confidential chat with an unworthy stripling who clearly thought Douglas might be a buffet snack _himself_.

 

There was an thunderous and orchestral pause.

 

Adam would have stepped back further, but to do so would have been to sit in the kitchen sink. He therefore recoiled only with the upper half of his body in a manner both unnatural and furtive.

 

Douglas’s copy of Ben Swain’s book dropped from Adam’s hand into the foam.

 

“Julius,” Douglas (softly) pleaded. With dreadful solemnity, Julius shook his head.

 

“Fuck,” said Adam abstractedly, and then, when he’d had a chance to think it over, more fervently: “oh, _fuck_.” Because, behind Julius, serving as the recorder trio to his bassoons of woe; the drizzle to his thunderclap; the small and bleating baa-lamb to Julius’s righteous stampede of ferocious bisonic woe – was Fergus. Looking from Douglas to Adam. With an expression decidedly ominous.

There was another awful pause. Adam thought that Baldychops’ eyes were filling; and then, suddenly, there was an enormous, cavernous, reproachful _space_ where the skullish one had been. Quavering tones, heard on a distant breeze of paper-pulp and cocaine dust, were even now requesting a taxi.

 

Douglas, all passion spent, relaxed from the deathless _honi soit qui mal y pense_ attitude he’d assumed, hooked a hand round an available bottle of wine, and slunk out (to sulk about vast bastard ex-husbands who installed Malcolm Tucker in their fairy castle but spoke to you as if you were a slut). Far away, by the _official_ bar, several hired waiters and the Mafia, as was the custom among their tribe, had begun devising a spirited rendition of Julius’s retreat – one Tory adviser, bagman to a semi-pasteurised Old Wyekhamist, considered borrowing Julius’s funereal slow sweep for his boss’s next encounter with the Cenotaph.

 

This left, as life so often did, Fergus Williams, without a leg to stand on yet somehow contriving to hop. Not even Michael, his Leader and _actual boss_ (Adam, as Fergus’s wife frequently reminded him, was merely an _aide_ and not some omnipotent splice between Svengali and Jeeves), could make him look so awkward: not even when, at his own Christmas party, Fergus had been discovered in desperately still-with-it small-talk with the sulkier _Michael fille_ \- who was actually shy of sixteen as opposed to twenty, unlike the sister with whom Fergus had fatally confused her.

 

More toxically still, the atmosphere hadn’t been as agonising between him and Adam since Fergus had genuinely made him come along to Niamh’s Alpha Course (only the third time the little madam had actually _met_ him), and Adam had got pissed off after fifteen minutes and asked where Daddy God stood on murdering both his parents in a car crash two days before Adam’s sixteenth birthday (this was Fergus’s third most-excruciating memory: a coveted position within the Williams Shame Olympics).

 

Nor, despite near-limitless reserves of chutzpah, had Adam himself felt so uncomfortable since Niamh, on approximately her fifth date with Fergus (and why _had_ he been on so fucking many of their preliminary dates – moreover, why had he _been on them_ and yet _allowed them to keep happening_ ), had spelled out in spilly, over-confident detail exactly and breathlessly _why_ she now identified as a born-again virgin. Adam decided suddenly that if Fergus was about to be a judgmental twat re: Douglas, he’d remind Fergus of when Niamh had told the exact same story to Graeme’s wife. Who was his second wife. And _then_ he’d return to his earlier theme of Fergus’s aversion to big black cock, progressive coalition be _damned_.

 

In fact, what Fergus said was worse. Fixing his eyes miserably somewhere in the region of Adam’s ear, and burbling in a low monotone which made Adam’s internal organs turn soapy yet viscose with horror, Fergus began to try and explain in detail _exactly_ how _very_ comfortable with any and all of Adam’s _lifestyle choices_ he was (as Adam found himself thinking: _you’re_ my lifestyle. I have a handover document in case I’m run over. It devotes fourteen pages to the state of your teeth and not letting you wear mauve. It’s true that I have sex, but not with Douglas, and actually the last time I had sex I nearly stopped to write down an idea for your next speech).

 

The most awful part, for Fergus at least, was Adam’s expression when he flickered a nervous glance across his face, at his eyes. In the last year or so, it had increasingly seemed that Adam never looked at Fergus without a very visible mental list of all the things he’d like to change. And then, of course, Fergus’s wife turned up, Miller in tow, the latter looking visibly allergic to human emotion but mildly addicted to Niamh’s ubiquitous tits. In a minute, Fergus knew, she was going to hiss at him that he was supposed to be talking to _Daniel_ , and then switch to her very public, highly sweetened voice which Adam had, on Fergus’s stag night, unkindly compared to cough syrup.

 

Niamh slammed the door behind her and Dan Miller and dragged them all into a tighter little knot between the microwave and the still-sealed crates of Perrier.

 

“There’s no point being silly about this,” she sing-songed, less cough syrup than full-on Anthrax, and visibly suppressed her fury when Fergus and his idiot friend simultaneously opened their mouths to protest. “ _Silly_.” She shot a silken, insinuating glance up at Daniel and Adam practically had a flashback, that was _exactly_ the look that she’d shot at Fergus over a leaflet on baptism, _why_ hadn’t he twisted her head off at source and _why_ couldn’t Fergus – he was meant to be the actual politician – ever manage to be even one per cent as controlled, cuntish and calculating as his manipulative wife.

 

She slid her arm through the crook of Adam’s, and Adam fought down a whole-body shudder that might have ended in sick. “Now,” she cooed sweetly, “tell me about your plans for Woodingdean.”

 

 

 

 

 

The party broke up about eleven, with – as is common after a book launch – the principal players each exhausted, overwrought, and trying to balance the sinking certainty of general failure (a feeling which is contagious whenever anyone writes a book) with the desperate optimism brought on by booze.

 

Julius, miserable on a slow train from Waterloo, was trying (via sugar boost) to imagine that Douglas had been _jealous_ about Malcolm, or that the rapt lustful gaze of that _horrible_ Kenyon had been neither a) enthusiastically requited, or b) an exact copy of the stupid way in which _he_ had once gazed at Douglas. Also, during his broken sweep from kitchen to taxi, Claire Pooley of the MoD had spilt prawn cocktail on his Jermyn Street shoes. Ben was alarmed because his now-pregnant intern had dialled “Mum” off his phone, but trying to convince himself that a) people had liked his book, and that b) his mother’s, er, reaction to not being _invited_ to the book launch (he’d thought he might need a restraining order for the whole of Muswell Hill) would be mollified by news of a first grandchild, albeit one he might be banned from seeing. Douglas was furious because the Prime Minister was ceding power to a walking gorgonzola, despite supposedly being a super-spy, _and_ because his ex-husband was cohabiting with Malcolm but still looked at him as though he were a slut (Douglas was not necessarily angry in that order). Fergus was cross and dishevelled and miserable because _yet again_ he’d tried to lean his head against Niamh’s shoulder in the taxi and missed, because Niamh had taken her temperature and his and pronounced this (yet _again_ ) Conception Night, and because Niamh had told him that homosexuality was not God’s Plan for Adam and he hadn’t immediately garrotted her with a book jacket.

 

And he was also cross and miserable because Adam was probably now in bed doing gay things with Douglas Lundy (gay things probably permanently embedded in the Safari search history on Fergus’s phone) and _even though_ Adam had pretended to still give a fuck about Fergus and the coalition and in their amazing plans for a secret spy trip to Woodingdean to secure the future of progressive politics, Fergus _knew_ that Adam was now actually only and exclusively interested in other men’s cocks. Men other than Adam. Although probably Adam was also interested in his own cock, oh god Adam’s _own cock_ fuck this was all going wrong was he going to throw up again ---

 

Peter wasn’t happy, because he had indigestion and eating to console your feelings does nothing. Olly wasn’t happy because, despite viable plans to use the breakout day as a coalition-planting extravaganza that might write his name in the history books, two problems loomed. Firstly, Dan Miller was going more madly Messianic than ever. Rather than simply shagging the mad Christian bitch, Olly was now just genuinely afraid he might try and replace God as the head of Niamh’s particular church (a filthy pun on spires floated through his mind, but Olly had learned to dismiss jokes along with trust, humour, and the possibility of human love). Meanwhile, the Mafia’s ongoing enthusiasm for the whole _fact_ of the Woodingdean plan was ominous beyond all conventions of horror films, superstition and life as Olly understood them. He had only ever earned from the Mafia a parody of acquiescence, and this enthusiasm had to be laced with irony (or worse). The only happy people were the lesbians, Angela and Emma, now post-coital in Emma’s superior bedding. And that should be a lesson to us all.

Sam, meanwhile, was neither happy nor unhappy. The flurry of furious text messages from Brighton presumably indicated that Jamie was still breathing, and a discreet app sync’d with an even discreeter one on Malcolm’s phone (which he would never discover, nested as it was in a subfolder labelled “Health”) informed her that Mr Tucker had checked into the Glasgow Crowne Plaza (Mr Tucker had been banned from another well-known chain after his travelling companion constructed a small bonfire from Books of Mormon provided for the spiritual nourishment of the Labour press delegation), and a grateful voicemail indicated he’d finally made contact with Sue. He had also downloaded the three schools prospectuses she’d been required to obtain and convert to .pdf format. Sam just doubted he’d find what he was looking for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Malcolm lasted slightly over three hours at Sue’s. Derek, the builder who refused to get fucking asbestos, had some square-jawed and imaginative thoughts about how to “solve” the “problem” of “immigration”, all of which Malcolm insolently pretended he would take on board whilst mentally (because he loved his wee sister) doubting whether Derek had ever _spoken_ to a black or brown person who wasn’t serving him a curry. Although clearly they’d never provided quite _enough_ , given that the fat fuck hadn’t died of an underchewed prawn korma.

 

Iona, the only person he was really, _really_ fussed to see, was off on some bullshit Duke of Edinburgh (hollow fucking laughter) scheme, but at least Sue looked well, and wouldn’t find the roll of fifties he’d stuffed into the shoe rack in time to argue about them.

 

It’s tempting to gloss over how Malcolm spent the next two days: how every curbstone pinned a memory down, and how he slunk across bridges and around steeples with his collar up, blinking every time the city opened itself up in half-secretive sunshine, and expecting, hunted, to see a Jamie or a journalist on every street corner. He looked like a vampire and behaved like a stray dog. There were brief rallies: the neat, unobserved visits to Victorian villas and sober red abbeys, where the air was sweetened by singing, and where he instinctively hung back from his guide, even as he tried to imagine Ruth or Nellie among the jumping, laughing weans in kilts and ribbons. It all went well until a woman caught him as he was leaving reception – cautious and chilly, a blonde in her fifties, and it wasn’t until Malcolm’d run through all the other, more devastating possibilities that he recognised her as Moira O’Brien from their first Holy Communion class, now deputy head and frankly appraising with green eyes clear as glass. Inane and on the back foot with a woman for the first time in years, Malcolm scraped together enough charm for an offhand compliment on the art display: but he couldn’t stop watching her. And again, she disarmed him. She assumed that he was looking for his niece.

 

Malcolm (all but) bolted from the school with more enthusiasm than he’d left the prison gates, and for the first time in decades really wanted a cigarette.

 

He mentally spat at himself all the way to Motherwell. At least, he cursed himself, that fucking hovel of a railway hotel had been pulled down; the soft mood he was in, he’d otherwise have gone and made himself a shrine. Christ. Stubbed a fucking bouquet into the rubble pit where old Nellhad poisoned and fleeced her guests with the enthusiasm of a witch, and where superstition and recession (not to mention the ear-splitting proximity to every fucking freight and commuter train) had prevented anything else being built. But no: Nell was gone to the plot split between Jamie’s family and its tributaries, up on the hill at Airbles, where Malcolm’s mother was also buried (and, for all he knew, his da).

Jamie’s mother had not left Motherwell, butchering her eldest son’s original plans to get her out of Lanarkshire. She lived now on a new estate – the new _kind_ of estate, which Malcolm half-hated as an executive mockery of the decent dreams of the working-class, and half broke his heart over, in private, wondering if his own mam would have liked one. Meg Macdonald saw Malcolm’s taxi before it was on the drive; he wondered whether she’d ever got over the habit of waiting by windows.

 

Another curtain rustled in the window above, and Malcolm winced. If he was lucky, it’d be Danny or Patrick, or one of the grandchildren too young to know his name yet. One reason Jamie’d hesitated to buy so big a house – not through lack of love, he’d have drunk the Leith for his mam in a _heartbeat_ (and god, Malcolm exactly remembered every cadence of his voice as he’d said it) – was that, pragmatically, he didn’t want the family itinerants stopping there much. And since Jamie’d half-kill anyone, including Malcolm, who suggested that his thieving drunken brother Brendan (or punchy, mad-eyed Caillen; or maudlin Patrick; or weird, twitching Aidan) were anything other than family-minded, near-teetotal vegetarians, this was a hugely indicative reservation.

 

The door opened.

 

It had been a bad day for Malcolm, seeing skinny fighty lads on every street corner, and masochistically catching the sound of a hymn from every church that he’d passed, but even behind her new specs and outlined in kohl, there was no mistaking Jamie’s eyes, but green now, shaped in Margaret Macdonald’s face. Jamie’s grandmother, whom Malcolm had only ever known as a barrel-shaped besom with claw-like hands and a green wig, had undoubtedly been his _fons et origo_ regarding temperament and interpersonal style.

 

The upstairs interloper remained out of sight while Meg – who had a wonderful capacity for being unsurprised – greeted him and ushered him through to her kitchen. A little tin table, like something out of a French café, was wedged into the corner – at this, Malcolm awkwardly sat while she made tea.

Variations on a theme of Jamie beamed out from magnetic frames on the fridge: Malcolm spotted a school photo, Ruth and Maggie, from a couple of years back. There was a collage, too, on the wall – above gingery Caillen and that puir thin bitch Malcolm vaguely remembered as his wife, he spotted a cutout of someone at his confirmation and if that was Jamie it’d be best not to see. Best, too, not to widen his eyes at the Sacred Heart nailed above the microwave. She was getting him her best china; Malcolm’d never really doubted it, but the light way she chatted confirmed she’d no idea about Jamie.

 

When Nell Macdonald (nee Docherty)’s husband died, Meg had been a doll-like, argumentative blonde of fourteen. She’d been nothing like her mother, and everything like her father – a dreamer, a liar, and incapable of managing her money (or other people’s). Willie Macdonald was either a distant cousin or, you know, an unfortunate coincidence. He’d been a feckless, charming, blue-eyed seventeen-year-old who didn’t mention a traceable family or a particularly good reason for his itinerant lifestyle. His profession, until he ensconced himself in Nell’s hotel, was basically standing beside a road with a box or toolbag, and a piece of cardboard marked with the name of various major Scottish cities. Lack of a husband, and a standing height of four foot nine, wouldn’t have stopped Nell beating the life out of him when she found out what had happened to her daughter. But by then Willie was both apologetic and gone.

 

Meg’s sister, Esther, had offered to take the baby. Her husband had work in Leeds. But it seemed too cruel to Nell, and when she looked down at her daughter sobbing at the table in her Littlewoods nightie, she couldn’t go through with it. When the baby came into the world as slippery, offal-streaked redness on a wet winter’s morning (Jamie Feardorcha, five pounds eight on his grandmother’s floor),  Nell announced to the priest that what with that husband and four daughters, she was inured to shame, and that this was the first boy to her household in fifty years. She’d been at school with Father Malachy and he shared her woodbines and agreed to help.

 

No help reached Meg – not really. By the time she was seventeen, she’d met an invalided day labourer whose bad back didn’t prevent him fathering a second child, nor leaving her for his sister-in-law, one wet Wednesday when Jamie was six and Brendan three. Four more stepdas followed, the best dying of cancer and the worst locking Meg and the wee yins in one caravan while Jamie roared in another.  Another wasn’t interested. The last had been married, and had the good sense to keep away. Father Malachy’d died, rolling from top to bottom of a staircase in the throes of a massive heart attack, but not before getting Jamie the promised place at seminary. Jamie’d planned to have his mam keep house for him. And then Malcolm’d put a stop to that. Giving the Sacred Heart, and the rosary, a second uneasy swipe of the eyes, Malcolm wondered what Meg prayed for, now.

 

The boy came downstairs about fifteen minutes later. It was a nephew, undoubtedly, and Malcolm lasted about another quarter of an hour before he had to bolt. Amidst the uncertain promises of a return visit, and sour-tasting lies about Jamie’s health and temper, he weaved his way _out_ of the anecdotes about how Gavin’s girls had gone to the seaside, and how Ella and Finn looked like Patrick but Jake favoured Jamie and Christ, yes, obviously the mad fucker who looked like Jamie if he’d been redrawn by either a sex maniac or someone with a long memory was _Caillen’s son_ , clearly, lurking by the fridge door with huge suspicious eyes and a Lanarkshire accent that made Malcolm realise Jamie’s own had _softened_ since the time he was as skinny and angry and unapproachable as this ridiculous kid. And the thought that Jamie’d been diluted in any way made Malcolm as powerfully homesick as any sun on the Leith ever could.

 

He wrote down Ailsa’s forthcoming wedding day and left a tenner for the baby. Caillen-son-of was scrutinising every button on his shirt and that unfurling, focussed concentration was starting to make Malcolm sweat. It would be an understatement to say that he found the next ten-second mental-fantasy a visceral. Malcolm merely experienced an immediate and striking image of what it would be like to have Jamie’s nephew’s lips around his cock.

 

 

It occurred to Malcolm on the way out that nobody’d fussed him about being in prison. He suddenly found he was laughing.

 

Malcolm was catching his breath in a café run – blissfully – by Albanians, as opposed to walking revenants of his past, when Julius rang. The old fucker sounded simultaneously distressed and defiant, but once Malcolm’d established this was _nothing_ to do with the contents of a certain Brighton side-room, he couldn’t spare the effort to find out what was behind this latest burst of imperial tremulousness. And besides, what Julius had to tell him was far too interesting. The Strategy day had been brought forward. The entirety of the team would once again be within a hair’s breadth of Malcolm, as of eighteen hours hence. Sam, Malcolm remembered, had equipped his new phone with an app for the trains.

 

 

 

 

 

Dream Barbie Castle, bought by Jamie’s sister-in-law against Claire’s feminist principles and Jamie’s apprehension about all the stabby bits ae plastic which’d inevitably get embedded in his feet, had been folded out into what looked rather more like Dream Barbie Ground Zero all across the living room floor. Jamie, in a dismal sulk about being not only tired but more tired than he could ever remember being, counting _both_ Night Of The Long Nick Hanways _and_ the Vomit Natvity, looked at the carnage and contemplated absolutely all the things his wife would find to say about it. Since his discharge, words had rarely failed her.

 

He wasn’t sure what was more irritating: Claire’s conviction that Malcolm’s retreat north was some Napoleonic counter-move in his evil quest to win Jamie from his family, or his own suspicion that it wasn’t. But whenever he tried to feel pissed off about the latter, he remembered Maggie and Ruth’s white little faces whenever they thought something was wrong between their parents. Maggie with a sort of smouldering fury and Ruthie with frank fear. He couldn’t think directly about his own father, because he’d never met him – but he could pay his mental respects to his nan’s teeth-sucking, ring-rattling rendition of the ballad of how Willie Macdonald knocked up her daughter and fucked off back to (pause to resettle that astonishing wig) _Dundee_. Absconding, good-for-nothing bastard.

 

The more recent good-for-nothing bastard had not only absconded but failed to fucking text.

 

And now Jamie was bored. He’d never been bored in charge of Nellie before. Three hours after being born, while defiantly disinclined to latch on, Nellie – though toothless – had drawn blood from the finger of an officious maternity nurse who’d tried to forcefully to assist them. She’d hit all her developmental milestones with consistent precocity, and then weed on the suede shoes of the paediatric playworker. On learning, in the middle of the night, how to climb out of her cot, she’d toddled downstairs (navigation of stairgate never fully explained) and was discovered mid-morning by hysterical, nauseous parents, still sleeping soundly, her stripey legs dangling from the tumble dryer door. Her first day at nursery had ended with both Claire and Jamie having to deny all knowledge of _what_ their youngest daughter had been doing to wee Olivia Teasdale, even though the former Ursuline convent schoolgirl and the ex-seminarian had both recognised, deciphered through their toddler’s mutterings that were (fortunately) still too Lanarkshire for East Sussex mums to understand, the basics of a Catholic exorcism. Olivia Teasdale was incredibly ginger.

 

Being bored in charge of Nellie intensified Jamie’s resentment of Malcolm. He’d never been bored in charge of Malcolm, either. Mind you, it seemed that even Nellie was mellowing with age. She’d not bitten anyone that morning, she’d allowed Jamie to brush her teeth and dress her in an adequate number of clothes without screaming or impersonating a starfish, and – even if Barbie’s Dream Castle (which reminded Jamie _acutely_ of a porno he’d once seen, set in Sexylvania with sexy demon vampire ladies, and _that_ made him guilty)’s Dream Fascist Drawbridge had drawn blood from his shin – Nellie was now playing relatively quietly on the carpet. Jamie drank morosely from his _cup of hot water_ (medical decree: caffeine would play very badly with the megaton of drugs keeping his heart from exploding into his brain, or his brain bleeding into his eyes, or whatever it was that sounded so very much like fucking good night in Glasgow) and gazed whatever bullshit US fuzz-fest was polluting his wee babby’s mind on the early-morning kids’ TV. Nellie was making “stabby, stabby” motions with the legs of a Barbie on the head of a Ken.

 

After a couple of minutes, the cartoon ended, and Jamie (a far more committed viewer than his daughter, who’d gained one ballet shoe but lost a sock and was now cramming Dream Castle Twink Paul into the Secret Treasure Drawer she was repurposing as an _oubliette_. Jamie’d once done the same thing with a stationery cupboard at the Department of Health) blinked a bit more appreciatively as a brunette presenter settled on-camera and began to read from a storybook. Jamie’s appreciation was both aesthetic and firmly political: thank fuck we actually _made_ some children’s TV in this country and, also, she had great tits. Contemplation of these (were they bigger than Claire’s? Yes, but that might be partially the _bra_ , Jamie could tell by the v-neck) delayed Jamie actually tuning in to the _subject_ of the storybook. Apparently, Milly Had Two Homes. A popping sound from the carpet momentarily distracted Jamie (Paul’s head had come off), but it wasn’t long before it became apparent _why_. Millie’s mummy lived in a house with two green trees and a red door, but Millie’s _daddy_ had gone away to – “ – prop up the desiccated career of an ex-con fuckin’ _zombie_ ,” Jamie mumbled, and felt more than a little ill. He changed the channels. Nellie squawked, but then Jamie found the _wrestling_ , and she came and nestled against his knee.

 

Jamie didn’t need a greyish seaside dawn, a blackmailing storybook and some quiet, televised male grunting to remind him he loved Malcolm. His personal commitment to an everlasting dark night of the fucking remains of a soul stretched back beyond his Brighton exile; beyond marriage; probably to just slightly before the second a skinny, drained punk who’d never heard about _football_ or had truck with fucking _gender_ but who did argue to the tips of his fingers while a bruise stained a face all bones, and whose freakishly mobile mouth alienated every man in the pub even as it called Jamie _home_ , had swung into view across the bar and peremptorily replaced all deities, candles, powers and dominions for good.

 

But the blackmailing storybook did Jamie – so he thought – some good. The five of them could never be the fucking First Family, and superinjunctions could only drag them so far. And – although his brothers were all ace, grand, sterling, and the _opposite_ of whatever Malcolm’d just said last – the gallery of fucking court cases and the number of wee gypsy graves in the ashes corner of Airbles (mam in black with a wet hanky; Jamie tired from the night train and wondering, privately, how much money Claire would _miss_ ) wasn’t much of a future. Working backwards, he counted his brothers’ das off from himself to Danny: absconded; absconded with the takings and his sister-in-law; brain tumour; prison, thank god; married; married _Muslim_. Not exactly a constant fucking gardener. Jamie looked down at Nellie (filtering out the pearly-teethed glee at watching one steroid-filled muscle slam another huge mound of meat and gristle onto the floor of the ring) and saw her girls, her cheeks, her littleness. After a moment’s stillness, he grabbed her and hugged her close to his heart.

 

A car braked outside.

 

In selecting a hire car, Malcolm had chosen the blackest, most gleaming, undulating sleekness of cold metal supreme; menacingly metallic enough to suggest Evilmobile, and ferociously fast enough to be Jamie’s wet dream. He parked it on the drive (it dwarfed the drive), and re-materialised beside it. He’d just had time to pop back to Julius’s and change his suit.

 

Jamie took one look through the curtains and immediately needed a cigarette.

 

Nellie on his hip, he answered the door.

 

Excluding for a moment the toddler on his hip; excluding for a minute the circumstances of his marriage and the noble but dangerously recent resolution to cleave only unto the family unit; exclude also doorstep, curtains, time, space and the various housewife or elderly inhabitants of the cul-de-sac.

 

Exclude propriety, probability and rub everyone else out of the picture, and join Jamie now in the blessed blankness of his mind in which (and only in which) he could step forward, kiss Malcolm and then fuck him senseless across the bonnet of his car.

 

Malcolm studied the sudden blankness of Jamie’s face, and his eyes gleamed.

 

He nodded. “I’m back from Glasgow.”

 

Jamie indicated by a sudden beetle-browed sullenness that he thought that was _obvious_ and also not impressive. He hitched his wriggling daughter a little closer; she – tactless and with the Macdonald instincts – was squawking and gesturing towards Malcolm, her robust little. Hastily, Jamie averted his eyes, since Malcolm’s eyes when he looked at Nellie were not good for Jamie’s marriage. Then Malcolm was standing in a sleek suit in front of a dream car with Jamie’s daughter on his hip, her robust little body severely crumpling his Armani. Jamie’s mind once again obliterated all the rest of the universe, and now (Nellie safely handed off to some unseen authority, possibly _Sam_ ) Jamie was blowing Malcolm before taking the wheel of what he suspected was a supercar engine.

 

“You’re back _early_.”

 

“Aye.” For the first time, Malcolm hesitated, and crowded a little more onto the doorstep. “Jamie.”

Somewhere to the east, seagulls were calling. There was a chilly breeze lifting old Mrs Parkin’s hibiscus, and a lemon-coloured sun on the pebble dash.

 

Jamie could have won an Oscar for poor self-awareness at the best of times, but given his dressing-gowned state, ruffled hair, grubby grey glue still clinging in frayed lines around the places most monitored, and Malcolm’s very recent acquaintance with another kind of prison, it’s perhaps not surprising that the sight of Jamie pale, tired and hopeless provoked the reaction that it did next.

 

Malcolm crowded even further, filling the doorway, blocking out the light still slanting along the cul-de-sac. He placed three pallid fingers under Jamie’s chin, and the combination saw Jamie tilting his head and arching his back even before those bony gristles could exert any pressure. He looked into Malcolm’s eyes with the simplicitly and certainty of his first time at Mass.

 

“You came back for me,” he queried, just as Malcolm breathed out, “They’ve brought the strategy day forward to tomorrow.”

 

Jamie reclaimed his child, “Fuck off and die, Malc,” and shut the door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday morning, Woodingdean.

 

Exterior, day. POV shot from the attic. A dozen cars are pulling up on the circular drive where – if anyone’s interested – Douglas Lundy famously failed to condole his ex-husband on the death of his mother, despite being in attendance at that mother’s memorial service. Pasty Londonites – the women mainly with laddered tights and train-applied mascara – stumble from local taxis and blink, horrified, at so much salt air before eleven. Two diminutive ginger men, whose accents float like scampi crisps on the coastal breeze, are unloading themselves, and a vast crate of booze, from a hire car. With them, and nauseous from being confined to the back seat, is a tall man, their ostensible leader. He is made of paperclips and has the face of a puppet. His hair looks like a cheap wizarding costume, and he is both whitened and afraid. If he were a prototype for the adult male, you’d tell the designer to do a better job. Twice, he thinks of telling the underlings around him to do a better job, faster, differently, with less muttered Glaswegian, and twice his mouth opens and shuts like a pointless pink toy flap. An errant curl pings up from the unwise side-parting. Malcolm (whose POV, of course, this is, _as are all things_ ) recognises and mistrusts the symbolism.

 

 

For this opening sequence, Malcolm – who had sufficiently remastered himself to refuse breakfast and just decant coffee directly from Nespresso into (almost) a vein – had sequestered himself, a mug and some black toast in an overhanging jetty; one of the crumblier and more Gothic parts of Woodingdean, decked out in the kinds of pointy and gryphonous shapes that most gave Ollie nightmares. Folded into a corner of the window, profile set in sharp relief against the morning sun, the anger at watching Ollie marshal troops Malcolm had constructed less from spare parts of old psychopaths than racial profiling and extremely specific psychological criteria had coruscated Malcolm’s features into something unmistakeably suggestive of horror films, bald eagles, and steel.

 

He was, of course, still irate about his recent failure. The invitation to come back to Woodingdean and get something _going_ hadn’t lured Jamie any more than the car, the suit, or the (and this most worried him) near kiss on the fucking suburban doorstep. The Glasgow school brochures (and even a couple of Rightmove printouts) remained uncrumpled in the glove box.

 

Malcolm was also worried about Jamie, in whose – insert the pause where a saner man might have admitted _beautiful_ – eyes Malcolm had read a trapped hopelessness with which he’d become very familiar – and yeah, even in an open prison, even and perhaps _especially_ with the basket weaving and the rehab and the wee communal gardens where you grew beetroot and practised safe use of tools and awaited your appeal date. There was also the issue of Maggie, whom he might never see again; Ruth, the code he’d yet to crack; and Nellie, tiny delinquent and obviously Jamie’s heartbeat, who’d probably grow up unable to remember his _name_. And Jamie wasn’t well (although that, in a way, was the least of it: he didn’t _have_ to contemplate going on without Jamie, because if Jamie were dead, Malcolm wouldn’t attempt to). It wasn’t even that Malcolm was trying to win back Labour and force them into government in order to reclaim Jamie as lieutenant, flamethrower and personal police force, because that manipulative skunk-faced blond bitch held three obvious trump cards in her tiny, life-choking hands. And he could (probably) never be in public life again. And if he were, it’d (probably) be bad for Labour at the next election. And although he could (certainly) dethrone Olly Reeder, refashioning Dan Miller from Illuminati sales-rep and embodiment of the (hair-dyed) New World Order (which was actually less _new_ than lizard-skin remake of the entire fucking 90s shitfest, jesus, why didn’t anybody remember the last time), convinced he was the Messianic road back to going forwards into a blue-sky landslide, all Compassionate Cool Brit and the same fucking endgame, into something less shit-slinging but _more_ shit-slinging, something less Kimbolton Fireworks and more (left-wing) single nuclear strike, would be more of a struggle. But, Malcolm was ready to become that Roman Candle for the age of post-austerity.

 

He knew that – for the country and the world – this would be a good, if brutal thing. And it was not that Jamie’s defection (a bit of muscle memory, at that: the muscle was his heart and Malcolm told it sternly not to have a coronary) made it all unimportant. Far fucking from it. It was not even, really (and this was for the best because the Woodingdean turrents were both spiky and very high) that he didn’t think he could win more of Jamie – whether handfuls or by inches – than he already had. But it was that the dirty gold sun now squinting inauspiciously through the opposite wing of crenellations presumably had plans to set approximately twelve hours hence, and if he hadn’t achieved everything – or at least _something –_ there’d be no justification in lingering in Sussex anymore.

 

Not that Julius would directly ask him to leave – although the sad fuck made noises about _dying_ to get back to London, barring Whole Foods, White’s and Nobu, the Baron Flabbage would probably be glad to pack a little Harrods hamper and slowly nosh his way to Miss Havisham, there in the East Wing. Malcolm didn’t want to be his companion or bumchum in this endeavour (note: this was slightly a lie, and an ungrateful one, given the man’s frankly embarrassing kindness since Malcolm became his houseguest. Having finally _stopped_ twitching around the place like a rehabilitated stray cat, Malcolm was ashamed to reflect on just _how comfortable_ he was becoming. Another uneasy reason to leave). And he was also starting to feel the discomfort of being free but not in London. London was – Sam had assured him, via text message – still his home. Albeit one without Jamie.

 

All through his life, Malcolm had held on to two basic principles: that there would always be time for Jamie to come to his senses, and that if the wee psycho didn’t, Malcolm would fucking well cope.

 

When he’d heard that Jamie was lying in a hospital bed, Malcolm had thought they had no time at all. Now, he was increasingly certain they just had a single day. And increasingly uncertain what Jamie in his right _senses_ might mean.

 

Beneath Malcolm, between the stone urns and the artisanal adverts now hanging from Woodingdean’s pillars (built by slave traders, restored by a hipster), and beside a Fairly-Traded whiteboard directing people to the Fairly-Traded workshops, Julius Nicholson was greeting arrivals and declaring the first Woodingdean House Breakout Strategy Away-Day open. Beside him, Alexander Nicholson was looking grumpy and sleep-deprived and visibly wishing he was on a horse. He also didn’t like the way these stringy yuppie bastards kept grinning at his wife.

 

Back in the attic, like a thin white reimagining of Bertha Mason and/or the Yellow Wallpaper, Malcolm scowled down. He’d already had a text from Frankie and a voicemail from Eammon, assuring him that the massed forces of Glasgow were ready to press and communicate his enemies at the very first rallying call. All of which left him with a single, crucial question, one Malcolm guessed also burned in the mind and spindly locks of O. Reeder: where the fuck _was_ Dan Miller?

 

Elsewhere, at the end of Brighton pier and comparing it unfavourably with Eastbourne, two tired and inarticulate Lib Dems were wondering the same thing.

 


	15. The Brave New Futures We Have Seen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know we’re better unserved  
> The Brave new futures we have seen  
> Filled with beautiful machines  
> Greener pastures, clearer skies  
> And not one such as you or I  
> \--- The Indelicates, "Savages".
> 
>  
> 
> A walk along the prom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. This might be a bit of a surprise. But, essentially, there was a WiP meme, and somewhere along the way I did write enough for the next, penultimate chapter. There's still so much more to come, and you've left lovely messages, thus I hoped there was enough here to make you willing to come along the next little bit of the journey. Thanks for your patience.
> 
> So, I repeat: THIS IS NOT THE END. There's a big, bad chapter or two still to come.

“There’s no Camera Obscura.”

 

Fergus grunted.

 

“And the Funtasia’s not half as good.”

 

When this didn’t earn further response, Adam sighed, and squinted towards the sun. He was trying hard to ignore either of the two most _obvious_ explanations for the way Fergus was tripling his chin and glaring. Either he feared recognition (logical but optimistic) or he was sulking.

 

In that case, Adam dearly hoped the source of the sulking was only Adam’s refusal to allow him seaside chips before ten a.m.

 

He tried once more. “Eastbourne Pier’s got a – “ This time, Fergus made a contemptuous and dismissive face even before he’d got the words out of his mouth, and seeing the next-but-one Prime Minister of Great Britain scowl his way into an impression of a cross baby potato twisted the top off Adam’s self-control - and let us all learn from this. Adam knew Fergus was an undressable, irritable posh boy with a truly vicious streak: a little colonel who, two centuries earlier, would have swished his dress sword and kicked at his men’s reluctance to die on the fields of Waterloo. He was the sort of man who one century earlier would have got clap merely from _looking_ at a French prostitute and whinged about spam as much as about the trenches. Adam knew that Fergus hadn’t had the sense to extricate himself from marrying a homophobic zealot, and that his inadequacies were responsible for the near-permanent adhesion of Adam’s fingers to the bridge of his nose. And yet, he’d cast both heart and career at the idiot’s feet, and now spent every meaningful minute of his life jogging along beside Fergus, either steering him in the right direction, stepping over his fallout, or trying to contain whatever fucking ridiculous tantrum was happening today. Or, as it now happened, facing his petulance on Eastbourne pier, waiting for a shitty rendezvous that in an absolutely best case scenario would only commit him to at least five more years of the same.

 

“What exactly is your problem, Fergus?”

 

“I don’t have a fucking problem.” Adam dearly wished he could push Fergus over the rail and into the waves – which – judging from the turd-in-his-sushi countenance – he found as distasteful and subpar as everything else about the morning.

 

Adam’s features assumed the universal expression for “unbe-fucking-lievable”. “I am not shagging Douglas Lundy.”

 

Fergus went instantly and totally purple. There was a long moment where satisfaction heated in Adam’s belly and spread up through him in a sharp and satisfying warmth. The pleasure it gave him was directly correlated to the fury of Fergus’s embarrassment and anger. But then Fergus looked back at him, and Adam found himself turning cold.

 

“I don’t care _who_ you fuck, I care that your endless quest for cock has put me in fucking gaytown at nine o’clock on a weekday, waiting to play Tinker Tailor Soldier Tit with someone who hasn’t even turned up, and whom I also hate.”

 

Adam breathed.

 

Because he’d long ago decided against acknowledging that Fergus could frequently hurt him, Adam allowed himself to play – above the mental sensation of an engine backfiring, or an orchestra turning up except grossly in reverse, or just the sucking sensation of what he presumed was his emotional capacity all sinking through him and down to the floor – a mental tickertape of all the alternative careers he could have had. A thinktank. The IMF. Newspapers in daylight. A novel, eventually, about the twat in government and the ease with which he’d left him behind.

 

He held the pose of studied incredulity for slightly too long, and out on the pier in the seaside sunlight, he saw the pinlike fury in Fergus’s eyes easing, and he was aware that his own countenance had dropped. Fergus had just started to once again hear his own heartbeat. Adam’s voice sounded very tight and very controlled.

 

“He is going to turn up, Fergus.” Fergus wet his lips. He’d almost forgotten how to speak. Adam exhaled, a little staccato beat, and reached into his pocket. “I’m going to have a fag.”

 

“But – “

 

“Mary can suck my – “ he stopped himself, to his eternal shame, and Fergus’s stomach, which had returned to consideration slightly after his heart, which was now pounded, began to curdle when he realised there was a slight heat in Adam’s cheek. The warning hand he held up wasn’t quite steady. “I’m having a smoke. Keep your eye on the road,” he muttered, and turned away from the breeze. Fergus held himself still for a second, exhaled as if ashamed of it, and concentrated hard on the traffic.

 

 

***

 

Jamie was thinking about all the nine hundred and forty five ways in which he would like to smoke a cigarette. He had attempted to make Nellie and himself a cooked lunch, and there was no point sitting at home while the acrid blackness slowly faded from the kitchen. Now he was stumping along the seafront, hating Malcolm as the circulatory punctuation of his skin and of his days, and (more immediately) listening to Nellie’s incoherent but not tuneless singing in her pushchair. Headless Paul having been recapitated and rescued, was now dressed in a large piece of Andrex, and sporting a distinctly pre-op aesthetic as Nellie clutched him in one chubby fist and methodically beat him against the open jaws of her cuddly shark (a souvenir of Ruth’s last party). Occasionally, Nellie shifted into audibility, and then passers-by paled and gave her worried looks.

 

The sea breeze ruffled the curls of father and daughter. Something Jamie couldn’t define caught at the air. Like an old dog, who with stiffened sinews and filmy eyes struggles to his feet and beats his tail at a once-familiar tread on the stairs, Jamie halted, frowned, and strained his eyes towards the pier. And then, like a righteous avenging hellhound with blood on his jaws and a deathless loyalty from his fangs to the pith of his heart, he got out his phone to call Malcolm.

 

And stopped himself.

 

Two figures were waiting on the near side of the pier. They were Liberal Democrats, piss-coloured, pisspoor explanations for the sickening mess of shit into which the country had waded itself. Jamie not only hated Lib Dems but was baffled by them. He didn’t exactly hate Lib Dem voters but he thought they should probably be either confined to dimly-lit playpens, or ritually branded in an old town square. This conviction hadn’t wavered or lapsed during his long period of political abstinence. But, interestingly, neither had Jamie’s party membership.

 

Malcolm had bought Jamie his first party membership, and his second. The second was still good, and Jamie remembered clearly all the ways in which the unions and the individual memberships had voted. At no point had they voted for any scenario in which two shitlicking centerist scumfucks would pollute the English seaside on the day what remained of a left-wing prospect was trying to get its fucking act together.

 

Without taking his eyes off Williams and Kenyon, Jamie slowly trundled to a bench, parked Nellie, and sat behind her pushchair, positioned at a convenient and stealthy angle. His first impulse had been all blood and glory, loyalty and death, and if he’d been dragged in front of the world’s media now – something Malcolm had never, ever, _ever_ permitted – he could have mustered a detailed and stirring defence of the political advantages of immediately giving Malcolm a call. Spies – even inept credulous crapulous ones – needed to be stopped.

 

And then a tinted-window, plain black car pulled up by the pier gates. Fergus and Adam peered at it, took a few cautious steps, and then – as if in response to a signal, began to walk/waddle/jog towards a blue-fronted café a few steps down, under the arches, sheltered from the more crowded promenades and one among many tiny businesses that spilled out onto the beach.

 

The car crawled a little further along the front, then deposited its charges. Dan Miller and Olly Reeder. Jamie’s blood swirled and bubbled like a first-generation CGI attempt at lava.

 

Mentally, he ran through all the arguments against another pointless fucking Coalition, and only stopped when he realised he was thinking in Malcolm’s voice. He could have explained, and almost (devoutly) believed that the tiny curly-haired monster sitting small and robust before him was destined for a better life if he rang now and helped the Labour party away from doom-laden joint rule. But at the sight of the bastards who’d shat on his friend, his party, and his _country_ in the consequence, Jamie was already on his feet, and dialling. Dan and Olly were making their way towards the café, Dan with a kind of Presidential furtive ooze and Olly as if he were made of crayons.

 

Voicemail. Jamie swore, and grabbed the pushchair again.

 

***

 

Fifteen minutes later, he’d doubled back to the car, and he had a plan. He’d left Malcolm a message, and then another message, and then when he was too furious to type tried to take a _picture_ of the café with an appropriate caption, but now his phone had a cracked screen and he was sitting in his car outside the café window. The car had two wheels on the pavement and Jamie’s eyes were emitting smoke.

 

The four people destined for two barrels at a pre-breakfast were hunched up by the counter, all elbows and knees round a two-person table. Dan Miller was disdaining his latte, Fergus Williams (predictably) shovelling down pure pastry and their minders alternately hating each other’s spinal fluid and sharing uncomfortable moments of solidarity. Every time anyone remembered why they were there, there was an oleaginous laugh and an I-agree-with-Dan joke.

 

It made Jamie so angry, his stitches hurt (and here the reader must be told a little secret: Jamie had been underestimating his place on the pain scale by two points, every time he was required to do, ever since regaining sufficient consciousness to think through the lie. Despite his body’s near-legendary ability to reknit despite the many lacerations, spatterings and poisons he subjected it to, a certain shivering, low-grade discomfort, although well below his pain threshold, was now permanently in his bones. He’d been grateful for the bench as more than a sentry post).

 

By the time Malcolm’s new killing machine zipped into view, Jamie was silently grinding his teeth. Nellie, who’d been strapped into her carseat without the customary starfish impression and well-aimed kick, gave a squeal of excitement and dropped the teddy with which Jamie had pacified her, as soon as Malcolm left the car and came level with her window.

 

Jamie glanced sufficiently in Malcolm’s direction to diagnose new levels of fucking Chateau Baldwank _catering_ even in the last twenty-four hours: Malcolm’s leanness, moreover (which was several marble-topped steps up from his usual jailbird gravebird _bones_ ) was covered in a new, conspicuous expanse of _tailoring_ , all of which Jamie would have diagnosed as a time machine to five years ago, were the pointy fucking thin white bastard not looking so irritatingly _up-to-date_.

 

Jamie badly wanted to know when the doorstopping ghoul had found time to fuck a tailor: in fact, Sam had couriered some Westwood down to Sussex in a good-luck gesture that had raised Malcolm’s spirits to the point that his eyes had brimmed with unaccustomed tears. Julius, of course, had frankly blubbed. Jamie (who associated Westwood with the name of an Easterhouse business centre at the back of which one could easily buy your finest Scottish-cooked crack) suspected none of this. Instead, he’d locked and loaded on a full-time narrative of Beau Bald Bumhole escorting Malcolm up to Savile Blow to play evil Tory sex games with a tape measure and eight metres of cashmere (to Jamie’s credit, Julius was locked and frequently _unloaded_ by a similar narrative, in whatever time he could spare from miserable fantasies of Douglas).

 

Malcolm’s new costume was so fucking irritating that Jamie found himself looking _again_ , and then – unaccountably – feeling hot, wrong and _uneven_ as he climbed out of the car into the seafront sunlight. Malcolm was not looking at the treacherous skulduggery, but at him. It occurred to Jamie that he himself was crumpled, lopsided and in his oldest jeans. It also occurred to Jamie that – after years of Malcolm complaining about everything from Jamie’s anorak to (in happier yore) the collection of rancid football and long-cherished band tshirts trampled against the footboard of Malcolm’s bed – this was the first moment at which Jamie’d ever minded his own appearance. And still Malcolm was staring.

 

“You look fucking _awful_.”

 

  
“Eh,” barked Jamie, fury everywhere at once. “I’m no’ on your dollar, cunt, so you can – “

 

“No,” Malcolm snapped, waving the distraction away – and it occurred to Jamie, inadvertently distracted, how very long he’d waited to see Malcolm wave his freakishly feminine hands about while dressed in a _really good suit._ “I mean – “ he hesitated, and Jamie, impatient, resisted the urge (he’d been at home with Nellie for _some time_ now) to stamp his foot. “You look _ill_ ,” Malcolm explained, with a long thin note in his voice, something like _worry_. For them, for _lately_ , for this weird expanse of post-everything, hollow time in which they found themselves (because even if Olly and the Inbetweeners were on the other side, with a plot full of smashable glass, this was the future they were living in, now), worry just seemed almost laughably domestic. Minor. For all the heart-stamping soul-searching Jamie’d been doing, plotting his destiny against those of his girls and counting out all the millennia of ways he didn’t want to resemble his da, being a middle-aged man with some recent, nasty internal bleeding had slightly fallen away. So why, narrowly observed on a street corner by the devil himself in salty air, did the naked concern in Malcolm’s face so frighten him?

 

Perhaps because, even when Jamie gestured impatiently at the window, Malcolm continued to stare. Despite Jamie’s wondering, he’d never guess that it’s more than pallor: it’s the fact that the rumpled hair, and tired unshaven face, the smear of facepaint on his ear and poster paint on his knee were windows on a world where Malcolm couldn’t have Jamie, and never had.

 

“Malc,” Jamie repeated, tone sharpening. “What’s the plan?”

 

“Too late,” said Malcolm, wryly, and at last his gaze was on the window.

 

 

*** 

 

They had been spotted. Olly had either shat himself or spilt his entire triple-froth macchiato-cock-coffee down his lap. Fergus had choked. Jamie and Malcolm watched, in deeply satisfying silence, the moment when all four of them decided they might make a quick exit out the back. Fergus ended up chinning the chair and Olly soaked Fergus’s phone and the table by knocking over Adam’s coffee. The proprietor, displeased by the chaos, began to shout (and Malcolm, glancing sideways, saw the cemetery hillside bleachedness had left Jamie’s face. The rest might have been a trick of the light).

 

Somehow, they made it to the back door. Where they found Julius (profoundly disappointed) and two undersized ginger men, joyfully doing the Lord’s work and munching on a meditative scampi crisp. Fergus, less ginger and taller but significantly lower in political life expectancy, asked in a petulant way if he was being taken hostage. Malcolm and Jamie made it round the back of the café just in time to hear Julius say _yes_.

 

***

 

“You can’t sack me, Malcolm! I can Snapchat and you’ve been in prison. And you don’t sodding _employ me_.” It was his fucking PhD interview all over again. Bag burst open and the handouts all in the wrong order. Snivelling in a taxi to Chateau Baldfuck because an ex-con had spooked him in a knock-off Costa. Christ Almighty, why did Malcolm _do this_?

 

Malcolm hadn’t said much. Not since _little chat_ and Fergus Williams’s nosebleed. Now he was gazing at the receding seafront and even if Olly hadn’t known it was unnecessary (pointless) to defend his legitimate political strategizing (quisling attempt to negotiate a floor-crossing coalition, fuck fuck _fuck_ ), he had a feeling he might not have bothered (would have shat himself if tried). Olly thought about Dan Miller, dispatched posthaste with Eammon and Julius to Woodingdean, and the Inbetweeners, potentially being shovelled into shallow sandy graves by Frankie, Jamie, and that terrifying child. Or just rolled like Lib Dem ngiri into the boot of the murderwagon Malcolm had _inexplicably_ left at Herr Macdonald’s disposal.

 

Beside him, Malcolm smiled absently at a passing seagull and Olly tried to think whether he’d prefer the cab or the beach.

 

“I think you underestimate,” Malcolm began, and the choice was _beach, definitely beach, sub-pier shingly sandly freezing cold beach –_ “the sheer _animal pleasure_ ,” _Big dipper, small dipper, find him ten weeks later with his eyes pecked out and ten stickelbacks living in his liver, only_ – “that I will get from destroying your career.”

 

Malcolm turned to face him, and the cold carrion fury sent icy seawater washing through Olly’s heart. “You’ll go. Whether it’s feet first in a box of digrace, or quietly to an American thinktank is up to me. But you’ll go.” He lent across Olly and tapped on the partition separating them from the driver. “Over here, please, mate.”

 

Olly gurgled. And squinted. There was an ancient Ford Transit parked on the verge, before glorious vistas of the southern coast and verdant pasture rolling to the east. A minimum of five auburn, copper, chestnut and strawberry blonde heads protruded from roof hatch, doors, and windows. In bright pink paint, someone had painted OLLY’S STAG DO across the off-white panelling. They hadn’t thought to wipe the dirt off first. An inflatable doll waved cheerily from the roof (to which somebody had attached him by the straps of his shiny new gimp mask), and L plates had been secured using tacks with a lifesize design of Geoff Holnhurst’s head. Someone who looked like Frankie’s evil half-twin was waving a rounders bat.

 

Malcolm smiled a cemetery row at the driver. “My nephew. He’s getting married in the morning. Here you go, lads!” Olly stumbled out into field scabious and cow parsley; red campion and lady’s bedswort. Oxeye daisies and an enormous cowshit. The Caledonians cheered, and took pictures and Olly watched, miserably, as the taxi, his rucksack, his career, and Malcolm all pulled away from him forever.

 

As it happened, Malcolm never went back to Woodingdean. He had a better idea.

 

*** 

 

“Well, fuck off _progressive government_ , fuck off DPM, fuck off _shins_ – “

 

“Shut up, Fergus.” Adam broke his touchscreen deathstare to refuse snacks and coffee on Fergus’s behalf.

 

“Jesus Christ, Adam, do you know what _Mary_ ’s going to do when she hears? Do you know what – God, _why_ didn’t I do A Level German, I could be in fucking Brussels…”

 

“Tell that to Jean Claude Van Cunt,” Adam muttered, tapping silently on his phone. There was a little whoosh as SMS and/or life decisions flew out the metaphorical door. “It was worth a –“

 

Fergus went the colour of filet mignon only recently detached from the calf. “It wasn’t worth a –“

 

“If I were you, _mate_ ,” Adam warned him, voice modulated to a murmur that sounded somehow like the _end_ , “I’d think before I finished that.”

 

***

Exterior, seafront, not quite mid-afternoon. Demobbed vampire in Westwood is uneasy about doing (sending) what he wants.

 

_– Where are you?_

 

Ninety seconds’ wait. Ping.

 

 

_– park kids no til 5 after brwmid_

_– What the fuck, drunk in a park now?_

_– BROWNIES_

 

 

A pause. Jamie again:

_– Cunt. where is reeder_

 

 

Malcolm found himself straightening his own fucking tie.

_– Dealt with. Which park?_

_– old steine_

_– What sort of fucking dirty mac name is that for a park?_

_– Cm or dnt I dn gv a fk_

 

(Jamie used letters in inverse correlation with his anger.)

 

 

Malcolm read the next message twice before he sent it.

 

_– I give a fuck_

 

 

The reply made him smile.

 

_put it on your fckin grave son_


	16. But I See You, And You Are Not Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And I have no ladder  
> And I have no rope  
> I can’t see where the sun is rising  
> I can offer no hope  
> But I see you  
> Yeah I see you  
> Yes I see you  
> And you’re not alone
> 
> \--- The Indelicates, 'Not Alone'.
> 
>  
> 
> Malcolm, Jamie, his wife, and his children. Warnings for bad shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to the last chapter caught me surprise, and I am very grateful. This is still, obviously, not the end.

Built in 1922, the Brighton War Memorial stands in the Old Steine Gardens, with somewhat over two thousand names recorded on its pillars. Jamie had never been surprised not to see a Macdonald recorded there, less because of their talent for avoiding death than because they were such a Hibernian lot. There was a Nicholson, but only one – Jamie rightly assumed he had nothing to do with Julius, given that the poor sod was only a Private when a bomb blew off his head as Ovillers, just north of that long summer road and the Somme.

 

There was one Tucker. Tucker, E. Jamie’d gone so far as to _look him up_ , once, in the bleak flyblown months when Nellie was a sleepless, screaming baby and it really had seemed a choice between either absconding from the PR firm to kick shingle as far as the parish church, or blinding his colleagues with their own blood.

 

Tucker, E wasn’t listed in the church’s roll of honour. Nor was he in _SDGW_ , the two fat volumes in desiccated 1921 braid, whose frayed and unrewarding pages Jamie’d inspected in the depressed and dehydrating silence of Brighton library. Apparently the dusty aircon was just the thing to give wee Nellie a nap. Jamie’d eventually discovered that the shady fucker _might have been_ Tucker, E[rnest], who ‘died at home’ in October 1917. Aged thirty-five. Not considered worthy of any holy memorial, but carved – all the same – into the fucking great pillars of 1922. Jamie, invariably, thought of him with a shiver.

 

Now, from the bench on the crest of the minimal hill, Macdonald, J. observed the approach of Tucker, E’s equally shady and equally unhealthy namesake. Malcolm had yet to walk through non-urban territory without looking like he was having a full-blown histamine reaction to it, and the average seaside tourist made him gather his coat around him like the vampire reincarnation of your pearl-clutching Victorian spinster. Jamie’s smug little conjuring trick, as the auld fucker was steadily realising (as those ponce plastic glasses did their six hundred quid job of bringing him into focus) was having Sam beside him. Sam, in a blue Joules coat and a ponytail, with a plastic bag of dinner and presents.

 

Nellie was stretched across both their laps, supine and sleeping, and Sam looked like her young and pretty mother. Malcolm congratulated the universe on the imaginative cruelty of its hypotheses. Nellie was in different clothes, again: a pink sleeveless dress under a turquoise hoodie, both with an enormous purple stain down the front.

 

“I’ve got an Airbnb,” Sam said, by way of greeting. “I suppose you’re going back to Woodingdean? Julius did kindly offer, but I thought I’d skip the barbecue of Olly’s testicles.”

 

“Get a taxi,” Malcolm said, and Jamie and Sam instinctively looked at each other; rolled their eyes. It made Malcolm’s skin itch. He couldn’t even locate his fury in a suspicion that they were fucking: Sam was above ever dropping her knickers on a carpet owned by Jamie. Jamie, who scooped his hand under his daughter’s limp little legs; Sam, who shifted to her feet in syncopation, neither dislodging nor waking her. Nellie huffed a sigh and flung her arm above her head. Malcolm said goodbye to Sam with a weariness and absence of inflection which meant he’d either mentally absented himself from the park, or that he was trying to forget what was inside his head. There was a gate to Old Steine Gardens, now - as the evening breeze began - by a laminated flyer that flapped against it, advertising a Spanish-language toddler group and Saturday farmer’s market. Sam closed the gate behind her, with its long unoiled wail of protest, and felt not as if she was leaving the garden, but as if she were shutting Malcolm and Jamie in. Into an arena, with the sleeping child between them, who - as she cast one last look back - had become a bundle of purple and gold.

 

There is a constancy in certain relationships, exceeding failure, ambition, or death. Long proximity cannot undo it; long absence still less. It is not friendship. It is not solely love. It has been adjudicated and articulated in every genre from sonata to rom-com, and every novelist of note has had their bash. In the early 1800s a mad teenager bounced off the walls of a fictitious Yorkshire kitchen and asserted that she had the same metaphysical basis as the mixed-race, disenfranchised servant her father brought home from the docks. In a galaxy populated by Lego figures, kinship and desire is negotiated by a variety of muppet substitutes and bisexuals who may or may not end up as siblings. Two pubescent Veronans lie down in a sepulchre to die in syncopation; two cold-hearted Venetians intend to die for each other but would rather finish off a moneylender. It is a jealous thing, more possessive than youth, and never without cruelty. There’s nothing noble about the recognition that perceives this constancy. It is a recognition that beyond ageing, dishonesty, honesty (much more damaging), desire and dislike, there comes a moment (as, you may have anticipated, such a moment had come for Malcolm) when the remains of one person looks at another human being and knows that whatever happens - postcodes, altars, prison - it only ever happened for, and because of them. It felt, For Malcolm, it was as if he and Jamie had once committed murder together, and met now for the first time since, hawk-eyed mourners on each side of a grave.

 

All plans became unmade. Instead, Malcolm contemplated the satisfaction of sending a text and being beside Jamie within fifteen minutes, albeit in a garden where some certifiable _vegan_ had wrapped fucking lilac wool around the trees. Here, though, was none of London’s intervening shit, like the smog or the cuts or the _Oval Quarter_ billboard homes, or the sad encroachment of cupcake stands. Because it wasn’t London, Malcolm knew he fundamentally hated it, and yet - the significance of that was abridged. The sea air was better for the wee yin, and in this particular garden a soppy auld git could, if moved, take the hand of another without remark. And yes, the sweetness of this evening was all the sharper because somewhere off in Nicholson’s buggery palace, four overbred laphounds and a dozen fiendish Caledonians were giving Olly Reeder the worst night of his life.

 

Malcolm fixed his eyes on the promenade bus stop, breathed in air that approximated cleanness, and turned to look at Jamie. He might never get over the shock of his nearness again.

 

He was certainly getting old. Jamie’s face seemed to be drifting downwards, the flesh redistributing in preparation for its reversion to skull; the skin thinner and more shadowed and more revealing of his eyes. His hair wasn’t thinning, obviously. The swamp monster on his scalp was breeding.

 

Malcolm had, in the days of his marriage and that period of time approximating his youth, spotted auld couples crossing the street, the deaf varicosed daft one slowing her steps to approximate those of the short-sighted auld boy on the zimmer, had panicked in no small measure about how much age could look like deformity, and how couples had any chance of hanging onto themselves, when so much fucking beige leisurewear and small tubes and stenches had to intervene between you and your elegantly wasted younger self. The fact was, as he had discovered, you died by inches. And what was precious became no less fucking precious for being compromised, for being fragile, or because there was less now than before.

 

It was Jamie who broke the silence, without jubilation and with an abbreviated gesture that indicated the body of his child. ‘I can’t,’ he said, softly, and Malcolm correctly translated, ‘I would’.

 

Undeterred, Malcolm raised his hand. He brought it up level with Jamie’s eyes, and with the slow cunning of a dealer in a bus shelter, with the light on the landscape drifting away and Jamie giving out his breath in one long shudder, Malcolm slid his corpse-robbing fingers into Jamie’s hair, and held him.

 

 ---

 

Jamie was late bringing his daughters home. The litter had built up behind the door again - free newspapers, defaced book bag, two small warrior figures with pink fluff moulting from their solid plastic heads - and it was a while before she heard the urgent creaking sweep and then the hurricane of Jamie, dinner, and three over-excited children banging their way through. Maggie’s Guiding uniform, extravagantly customised, smelt inordinately of smoke (Outdoors Badge) and she was arguing with Ruthie (next-but-one to Sixer, woggle lost, Elves, _Danny Champion Of The World_ borrowed off Ewa) about whether or not her best friend Olivia would succeed in bringing her drumkit on the bus for their London schooltrip tomorrow. They were gonnae find a recording studio, they were gonnae form a _band_. Nellie, overtired and with villainous orange mouth stains now clashing vibrantly with the probably-indelible cassis on her hoodie,, had shouted BUM at Mr Eliot from over the road and was equally loudly denying having done so. But Jamie, perennially wounded by the pushchair and wheezing slightly from over-exertion, seemed nonetheless in good spirits.

 

The four of them were accompanied by the pungent smell of fried fish, and the greasy parcels - in the seat of Nellie’s pushchair, _really_! - tended to explain it. Jamie looked cheery rather than apologetic, and didn’t swerve from giving her a kiss. Ruth trailed upstairs to change into her bee-striped pyjamas; Maggie dumped her flute bag on the floor and started to explain Russia to her mother. Nellie almost spilt chips on the carpet, but was stopped. In other households this might have meant chaos, but here it was normality and nominally good behaviour. A not unpleasant smell of grass and tobacco was shifting up from her husband’s hair, but it _was_ his hair and not his mouth - he hadn’t been smoking. One tab of mint didn’t hide that. After applying Vanish to Nellie’s hoodie, they served up fish and chips on a table rapidly denuded of paperwork, chargers, complex symmetrical Duplo sculpture, a cadet branch of Ruth’s notebooks for Lists of remembering things that were _important_ (Ruth was last to dinner, having changed into her pyjamas only as a pretext to spy on Mr Eliot, once again observed suspiciously _puttin’ things in his bins_ ), three Sylvanian Family pandas dressed with some force as miniature Jihadists, a lone Hobnob and a Build-a-Bear skunk. Three daughters, Claire, and Jamie; the five points of a star. Four portions of cod and chips (one half-size, to Nellie’s chagrin) and one - and how, after all, Claire loved him - baked cod and peas, not fried.

 

“Course,” Jamie smiled, seeing her surprise, and Claire blessed him, unaware. They had a happy dinner together (in sharp contrast to e.g. the two moderates shivering and delayed at Brighton station, exchanging grumpy estimates of their standing with their leader, and debating _shag, marry, kill_ over Emma Messinger, Sarah Ferguson, and Helen Hatley). They had a happier evening, in silent, sensuous solidarity as Nellie told a rambling and surreal anecdote that would have convulsed parents of any toddler less conscious of her dignity. Maggie condescended to play the flute. Ruth, her ash-blonde hair self-styled as pineapple, arranged her favourite fossils into what occultists would have recognised as a quiet _sigil_ on the living-room carpet. In the traditional staggered ritual, they put, coaxed, and ordered their children into bed, straightened duvets, examined toothbrushes for forensic evidence of brushing, and ensured that all paraphernalia more technological than battery-powered was banished beyond their (individual, carefully-labelled) bedroom doors. Nellie’s night-light began to croon its chipmunk-pitched lullaby, and she fell asleep with almost aggressive speed. Ruth sang softly in the darkness and asked whether all dogs are friends. Maggie looked forward to her school trip the following morning. Jamie even took his probiotic, talked stoutly about his return to work.

 

Claire, exhausted and looking forward to removing her bra, felt more hopeful than she had in weeks. Familiarity was streaking the sky with all the warmth and resolution of a sunset; plus, Jamie’s inadequately sneaky glances seemed to broadcast exactly what he thought of the dress she had on. She was, despite herself, disappointed when he didn’t try; concerned, slightly, when she found him staring out of the bedroom window, the curve of his jaw and the extreme, almost lunar blankness of his blue eyes reminding her, for a moment, of Ruth.

 

“Thinkin’,” he apologised, when she caught him. “Lots of it.” Most of her husband’s cognitive processes involved shrapnel, noise, or nails. This stillness was uncanny, and for a moment Claire wanted to run downstairs and shake his phone until Malcolm Tucker and his explanation fell out. But she was the one who’d banned mobiles from upstairs, and as her husband drew her close and kissed her hair, the impulse seemed ungracious. “Best woman a man could ask for.” She arched an eyebrow, and, after a second, he made faces of mock-exasperation. As he drew the curtains, his hand hesitated on the window. “Shall I shut this?”

Testing the temptation to sigh against an impulse to hope, she sat down and shook her head. “It’s a nice enough night.”

 

It wasn’t.

 

Jamie dreamt of the sea. Dan Miller was drowning on a raft made of disintegrating newsagents’ porn of lasses in granny pants, so for a while the dream was not a nightmare. Four dogs Jamie didn’t recognise were bounding up and down the beach, barking and clattering the shingle, and Jamie couldn’t work out what the danger was until he realised he was on a raft of his own, a basket on wheels, as if he’d been daft enough to try and ride the sea in a buggy.

 

He hadn’t been the only poor sod with that idea; the sea was filling up like a churning basin, all of them on vehicles trying to get to shore. Dan Miller had been mown down by a seagoing Quattro; his own Ford Anglia nemesis was piloted by a fish in a businessman’s suit. He saw Malcolm’s Merc from years back; Baldy McBaldface’s Lexus, and then a schoolbus, submerged to the upper deck, with smeared little faces - faces Jamie recognised - blinking to him from behind the glass. They were all striving for the shore, rebuffed by waves as the sky darkened and the parallel tides began to swirl. There were Neopets floating on the waves; trolls; tiny plastic warriors with pink fluff in their hair; chilli-shaped fairy lights; e-cigarettes; Claire’s handbag and the tin safe where Jamie’d locked up the last remains of his political life. From the shingled beach, people were trying to reach them - the Somalian refugees, Julius, a bunch of fucking charity chuggers and Bloody Mary herself, wading thigh-deep towards the cars and the bus, and Jamie tried to shout to them to leave everything except the latter, to break the glass on the upper deck.

 

The waters were grey and cold like the rain running down the streets in Glasgow, and as Jamie tumbled shoulders-first onto a Motherwell terrace he knew that he was already drowned, that he’d left them all behind and he was, once again, cold and alone.

 

 ---

 

“And then what happened?” Malcolm asked.

 

Jamie hadn’t washed. The girls had gone to school early, Nellie to nursery, and in his haggard inexactitude about timing, Maggie had managed to sneak past her sleepless father all manner of capital-bound contraband, including lipgloss, bus snacks, and a moth-eaten t-shirt demanding the abolition of the patriarchy and the immediate enfranchisement of the coal-mining North (Maggie assumed this had belonged to her mother. In fact it was Jamie’s, and although he still very heartily endorsed the sentiment he would have banned it fucking instantly on the grounds Maggie intended to wear it _as a dress_ ). Maggie planned to spend the bus journey adding safety pins.

 

Jamie had texted Malcolm with shittily trembling hands and forgotten to pop his medication; the result had been a hybrid of predictive text Tourettes and a kind of semaphore Kafka. As it was, they’d ended up opposite the pier, two hours two early for more than seagulls and starlings, with their only companions the Romanian teenager who repaired the zombies from the Horror Hotel, the pier’s solitary ghost-train, and the zombies themselves, who lay face-up and dismembered on the boards, having their ectoplasm re-stocked in the sun.

 

“I had a fucking dream,” Jamie croaked, hair at its zenith of bogbrush, fingers shaking, and breath still audible as the light streamed on. I was freezing. _Freezing_. I could hear all the - water, and the cars, and the fucking _dogs_ runnin’ up the beach, I think that bitch Sureka was there, I cannae believe the schoolbus wasnae on the beach, one ae those big fuckers, the Amwar buses like Maggie’s class are on to London. Christ, you dinnae think - ?”

 

“You’re psychotic, not _psychic._ Go on, twat.”

 

“Well, like I said. It wasnae real - but it was _Glasgae_ , Motherwell or Morningside or - “

 

“Jamie,” Malcolm said, and at his own name, half prompt and half caress, Jamie spat out sea air and held fast to the sea-wall rail. “Whisht, you daft cunt. You’re safe.”

 

“I was cold. I was cold and I was _on my fuckin’ own_ , again, and that’s how it’d be, if you an’ me went an’ left my _bairns_.”

 

Malcolm felt his whole face drain of blood. “I’d never -“

 

“But she’d see to it. She would. “

 

“She couldnae. And we -“ Malcolm found the limits of his vocabulary. The zombie-remodeller eyed him curiously and began carrying his charges back towards the ride, like babies, their cobwebbed skulls and dangling intestines draped over his shoulder. Jamie’s eyes were the colour of the morning sky. “You an’ me, we - “

 

“Oh, dinnae fuckin’ look at me like that, Malc. I know. Of _course_ I bloody know.” Malcolm blinked, but Jamie was crowding up into his vision. “I’d take five seconds of you, this, over years of lawful wedded life wi’ Claire, and that’s exactly the tradeoff I’m makin’ by standing here. I woke up from a fuckin’ _alimony_ of everythin’ I’d chuck away to be with you - “ _he means ‘allegory’,_ Malcolm thought. _He means allegory and I’ve fucking lost,_ “and what did I fuckin’ do? _Rang_ you. Practically _greeted_ for us to meet.” He glowered down at the sea. “You should piss off back to London. Take Bloody Mary round Jaeger. Dan Miller must be ripe for ECT 2.0.”

 

“D’ye not want to come back and _fight_?”

 

“If it’s not that bitch, it’d be another.”

 

“You havenae _really_ given up.”

 

“Not on - don’t. Ach, _don’t_. You always fuckin’ look the same. You and that earring.” He hadn’t worn one for twenty years. “Do you ever think, if we’d been younger -“

 

“Fucking point of no return, stop right there,” Malcolm muttered, but it was the single eviscerating point and he thought of it in more detail while mentally impaling himself on the railings’ spikes. There were wankers walking bulldogs down on the shore now. As a distraction he tried to attribute the old quip about never trusting dogwalkers because it was always them who found the bodies. Like his Jamie.

 

Pop that pronoun up in the frontal lobe and obliterate it now.

 

 _Not his_.

 

But if he had been, if they could exculpate their sins with reference to the slow limp of progress, could they say they’d have managed differently if they’d been born a decade later ( _Jamie_ a decade - it might have taken Malcolm two)? Could either one of them profess that the mess they’d made of themselves was down to timing? Even as Malcolm tasted the thought, he knew it was false. He could construction about how the legislation had failed them, how they’d fouled it up through lack of CPs, equal marriage, that their problem came from being born on the wrong side of history. But he and Jamie, had always found the _right_ side of history - or, better, history had made sure to be on the right side of them. Whether in Downing Street or prison, the one thing Malcolm Tucker had never been was a man out of his time.

 

Jamie squinted up at him. “So you _don’t_ think -?”

 

“I wouldnae change it,” Malcolm admitted, and he knew his voice was cool, knew from the fury in Jamie’s eyes that he felt he was regarded coldly.

They faced each other now, the traffic making concerted efforts along the promenade; the sea losing its greenish tinge, and the generators switching on as the first coaches appeared. He looked down at Jamie’s face, superimposed on all his other memories. Waking, sleeping; drunk in let-down bars; grinning at girls and unconscious in a hospital bed. “Not for changin’ you.”

 

Jamie considered this phrase as though the words were a wasp in his mouth. Then he said, “ach, fuck _you_ , Malcolm”, and stepped up and kissed him.

 

\---

 

Claire saw them from the roof bar at the Heights. It was just her, the cleaners, and a few jetlagged Americans, all confused by each other’s presence. Since deciphering Jamie’s fevered mutterings that morning, Claire had suspended any emotion in favour of mechanical impulse, and in the process discovered a talent for stealth which she had hitherto not suspected.

 

There are few British cities, let alone seaside ones, where two middle-aged men - one cadaverous and grizzled, one hirsute and unwashed - kissing passionately mid-morning against a blush-pink trailer marked _Victoria’s Donuts_ could attract less attention than in Brighton. It’s possible that Claire was their only watcher. For numerous actors in this story - Reeder, Kenyon, Williams - it is a pity that they weren’t there. What’s certain is that Claire was the only person who, despite blurred vision, and after a lengthy pause, found confirmation in the press of a button. She angled her phone slightly away from the sun, and in a parody of analogue technology, the cameraphone accompanied the photograph with the recorded noise of a shutter’s click.

 

When she got back down to street level, they’d vanished. Initially she was dazed enough almost to walk beneath a bus’s wheels, by accident. For a while she thought she couldn’t drive back, but in fact being in the car was calming: telling herself she remained in shock, she performed each action of driving with solemnity, turning the wheel with exaggerated care. Swinging up towards Chester Terrace, she began to feel marvellously purposeful. Once through her front door, she rang in sick to a sympathetic secretary, offering to go through some of her paperwork - headmaster’s presentation to the governors, thank-you letters for the kids selected for the TravelFirst placement tasters, fundraising campaign for the astroturf pitch - that afternoon. The secretary thought she was feverish. Moving to and fro, sorting clothes and debris into piles, Claire became aware that that mastery was converting itself into escalating nervous energy; that blue socks and blue bricks and blue nicotine patches were being swept into the same pile, and that a piece of paper with (ominously) MR ELIOT in Ruth’s brackish scrawl had been sorted into each successive corner of the dining table. Claire stepped hard on a piece of plastic fashioned (ironically enough) into a miniature Louboutin, and the instant agony both pierced her skin and brought tears to her eyes. She braced herself against the table and heaved. When she could spare a hand, she began lopsidedly sifting through the nearest pile, quicker than before, as if daring one of the items to make her cry in earnest. Challenging them to poignancy. And then she moved.

 

He kept it under their bed, like a) a fucking moron and b) the protagonist of some bullshit mystery story printed in the kind of boys’ comic he’d always been too much of a gobshite to read. It was the size of a shoebox, black, and although an industry leader only six years ago, resembled - like all the hardware Jamie bought - the black market offerings of some technologically-challenged Soviet state. An offshoot of Chechnya, or a Siberian minor boffin’s weekend project on a bad day. The dial was partially obscured by a stuck-on Iggle Piggle. Claire exhaled. Tried the code. Jamie had the same four-digit pin code for all his cars: no good. She tried Maggie’s birthday, Ruth’s, Nellie’s, his mother’s. Their anniversary. With a lurching gut she also tried Malcolm’s. Nothing. A minute later she was back downstairs, chain on the front door, jamming a kitchen knife inside the safe door. Nothing. A hairpin did nothing to the lock. And so she took it upstairs.

 

One minute later, Mr Eliot, a congenitally nervous man whose dipsomaniac inclinations had been greatly exacerbated by living opposite the three doll-like, diabolical Macdonald girls, saw the Macdonalds’ mother standing at her bedroom window, through which she hurled a square black object which he initially mistook for a bomb. But when it opened, splitting sharply on the corner of the Macdonalds’ sadly unpaved drive, the worst of its shrapnel was keys, coins, and a villainous and overstuffed black notebook, its corners denuded from use, and its pages edged like dirty fingernails. Claire unlocked the front door and squatted down beside it, her feet bare and the door-jamb banging in the wind. Her back was wet with sweat. The fall had broken apart the four-ring mechanism that identified Jamie’s scuffed book as a primitive and now-cannibalised iteration of the Filofax, instituted by Malcolm, on order, after he’d killed a fifth Blackberry. It was his backup, never lost or loaned. It smelt heavily of Madras (small red flecks adhered to the pages) and some pages were tinged with beer. These thin paper leaves were falling into her hands, but hadn’t been disordered. Claire just prayed they weren’t out of date. She wasn’t sure, not _completely_ , whom she wanted. So many names were out of the question. For a while she lingered on _Shel_ _(Mrs Frankie)_ , half out of the temptation to rage at what a sexist bastard she’d married. But no. She wasn’t looking for sympathy, or even for Jamie to be beaten up (for that, she’d have called his brother Caillen, and _his_ number was in her own phone). The choice of interlocutor needed to have resonance beyond Caledonia, or it was no choice at all.

 

She would push through her humiliation. After this message would come the locksmith. A solicitor. Sole physical and joint legal custody; an alimony package to reflect his new generous salary and his personal life. It was ironic that Maggie should be visiting London; Claire was determined she should never see it again after today. With profoundly unsweetened bitterness, Claire remembered the three pregnancies he’d foisted on her, not without her enthusiastic cooperation but certainly without her understanding of just how monstrous, just how _ridiculous_ he would make her motherhood one day become. The bastard had only ever had to _look_ at her. Not just for a baby. Clearly, he still had the same effect on Malcolm.

 

When Claire found the name she wanted, her hands and feet were mottled with the cold. , She tried the number without bothering to withhold her own. A voice like the mothers she dealt with answered, and that was sufficient. She hung up, found her outgoing calls, and chose ‘Send Message’. The image of her husband and Malcolm filled the screen. She found that zooming in gave her more detail than she’d had witnessing the kiss at first hand. Jamie was in the foreground, his bunched hoodie, in Malcolm’s fist, lifted to reveal the faint line of boxers, parallel with his jeans. Malcolm’s silvered hair and gaunt profile would have been visible anywhere. From the angle of their bodies, they might have been drunk.

 

Claire hit send. Then, dropping her phone and the wallet on the drive, she walked back into the house, gravel and dirt on the wrinkled pink soles of her feet, and a wintry cyanosis in her fingertips and lips. She barely reached the downstairs toilet before throwing up.

 

She heard the landline through the wall while still embracing porcelain, and then - dim and distant - her abandoned mobile through the still-swinging door. Probably Neighbourhood Watch would have her sectioned. Her mobile was whining Jamie’s personalised ringtone: how appropriate that their first conversation as separated people should occur while she had literal, as well as metaphysical bile on her lips. She checked her watch, and smiled - Emma Messinger was even swifter than she’d hoped.

 

She staggered back out to the front garden, and let the tune cycle round twice more while she scooped or stuffed the last few handfuls of Jamie Macdonald’s political career back into their W.H. Smith urn.

 

To Mr Eliot’s disappointment, she answered her husband’s (seventh) call indoors.

 

He sounded dreadful.

 

“Claire?”

 

“Piss off, Jamie.”

 

A crackle on the line.

 

“Pet, where are you? Is anyone there?”

 

A hollow laugh. “I havenae called the fuckin’ papers yet.”

 

“What? No - I mean, are ye at home? Y’need to sit down,” he warned, and just as she drew breath to excuse him his _pleasantries_ in how he confessed his fucking adulterous desertion to the mother of his children, the father of Claire’s children croaked out, “It’s Maggie. The bus turned over.”

 


End file.
